


A Good Man Is Hard To Find

by CatsOnMars



Category: Tiger & Bunny
Genre: Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Family, First Time, Flashbacks, Gen, Het, Humor, Kaede getting over her crush on the wrong guy, Karina getting over her crush on the wrong guy, Kotetsu and Antonio being macho idiot teenagers, Let's see what else..., M/M, Makeup Sex, Nathan would totally be into glam rock tho, Slash, Superpower Sex, Taking the neo-1970s thing too seriously, Unresolved Sexual Tension, also by way of, and some pretty terribly sad stuff with him and Tomoe I'm sorry, love writing them too though, will eventually feature
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-01-27
Updated: 2012-02-09
Packaged: 2017-10-30 04:42:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 45,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/327852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatsOnMars/pseuds/CatsOnMars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The city was complicated and dangerous, everything shrouded in facades, and maybe it was no wonder someone like Barnaby who'd never known anywhere else would be so reluctant to trust anyone. Still Kotetsu could imagine nothing lonelier than the childhood he'd spent in a safer and simpler place.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Barred Windows

**Author's Note:**

> The timeframe of this story starts during the time skip between episodes 13 and 14, and soon it will go AU after the events of episode 22 (because I had actually written and planned a lot of it by the time that aired and was just kind of attached to my take on where things could go after that point).

 

 

 

.

4 MONTHS AFTER THE DEATH OF JAKE MARTINEZ

When Barnaby had bothered to mention he was going back to his apartment for lunch today, Kotetsu had chosen to take it as an invitation for him to come along. He'd now made it up to Barnaby's floor with him without yet being asked why he was here, so he must have been learning how to do  _something_  right when it came to being friends with this guy.  
  
After they'd stopped at the right door, Barnaby dug around in his pockets briefly and then muttered, "Hm..."  
  
"What?" Kotetsu asked, his eyes following Barnaby as he stepped over to the wall to their right.  
  
"I must have left my key somewhere at my desk," he said. He was reaching behind one of the decorative statues that were displayed along the hallway in cubbyholes in the wall. He pulled out something flat and silver and then came back over to the door.  
  
"You keep a spare  _there_?" Kotetsu asked as he watched him sliding the key through the slot on the wall that gave a faint beep as it registered the chip inside.  
  
Barnaby shrugged as the door automatically slid open and then stood aside a bit to let Kotetsu go inside first.  
  
"Don't you worry about somebody finding it?" he asked once they were both inside. "A location like this has to be a magnet for break-ins."  
  
"Well, I don't have much for anybody to steal, do I?"   
  
"Some pervert could sneak in and watch you sleep."  
  
"Yes, I suppose there's that," he replied in a half-sarcastic, uncaring drone.  
  
They were heading back through the hall to the kitchen past Barnaby's bathroom and bedroom. The narrow room shared the same gaping view of the city that the sitting room had, with a long counter taking up most of the opposite wall and a bar to sit at in front of it. Kotetsu sat down on one of the spinning barstools as Barnaby went behind the bar and opened up the refrigerator to look inside. "There are three...no,  _four_  containers of leftovers in here from the past week or so," he said. "I think most of them are yours that you left here."  
  
"I'll take that shrimp pasta," Kotetsu said, recognizing what was in one of the clear containers.  
  
"That's mine."  
  
"Oh." His phone chimed in his pocket, and as he took it out he said, "I don't care, just pick something and I'll eat it."  
  
While Barnaby got out a couple plates, he looked at the message he'd just been sent and laughed instantly. Karina had sent him a photo of a silver-toned key that looked just like the one Barnaby had just used, with the short message "Barnaby's?"  
  
"What is it?" Barnaby asked.  
  
"Blue Rose found your key," he explained, starting to type an answer to confirm it was his.  
  
"How did she guess it was mine?"  
  
"It looks like you dropped it somewhere in the training center. There are only so many people allowed to use that place." He set his phone back down after sending the reply. "I asked her to leave it at your desk if she's going home soon."   
  
Barnaby nodded. He stuck the two plates now with leftovers piled onto them into the microwave and then looked a little thoughtful as he leaned back against the counter waiting. "Wasn't she the one who sent you a text late the other night to bug you about the mess you'd left in the lounge?"  
  
"Yeah, what a doll, huh?" he said, sarcastically but not without affection.   
  
Barnaby raised his eyebrows for a second. "She should get a boyfriend."  
  
Kotetsu broke into surprised laughter. "That's what I'm always saying," he said. "She works too hard."  
  
He just smirked a bit at that. "I guess you're pretty good friends with Ms. Lyle then."  
  
"Hm?" Kotetsu looked up at him, trying to work out what was behind these questions as much as he could by looking at his face. He felt like Barnaby was trying to figure something out but not just asking about it directly like any socially competent person. "Oh, it's not like she regularly abuses the great privilege of having my phone number like that," he said with a dry smile. "How sad would it be if she didn't have anybody better than me to talk to outside of work, right? Nah. We're just two parts of the team like everyone else...I don't know." He smiled thoughtfully, fiddling with his phone on the table. "If I really think about it now, I guess I am especially fond of Karina. This job can get to some people's heads, but Blue Rose is pretty grounded, especially considering all she deals with at her age."  
  
Barnaby was bringing the food to the counter. He pulled up a stool that he had moved behind the bar so that he was sitting opposite Kotetsu and said, "She can certainly beat you in professionalism most any day, I'll give her that."  
  
He put on a smug look. "Is that supposed to hurt my feelings?"  
  
"Well, that  _was_  pretty rude of you to leave all those coffee cups and crap all over the lounge," he pointed out as he picked up his fork.  
  
"I  _told_ her, it was a  _stack_  of cups that Antonio and I had been making on the table, and we meant to keep adding to it the rest of the week. It wasn't a mess until somebody knocked it over after we left and ruined the whole thing."  
  
Barnaby shook his head. "Maybe you're the one who needs a b—a girlfriend. Or something." He looked back down at his food awkwardly.  
  
"You were the one who suggested we go grab some dinner after you finished that report and then took forever. I was just waiting for you to come rescue me from having nothing better to do."  
  
"I see. What a relief."  
  
"Shut up," he said at Barnaby's smartass tone, just getting another smirk in response.  
  
As they both went quiet eating for a while, Kotetsu looked at his phone again to go through some other texts and delete a bunch of them. He'd taken three bites of noodles before his fork picked up a piece of shrimp, and then he actually looked down and paid attention to what he was eating. "Wait, this is the...You gave me your plate, Bunny."  
  
Barnaby sighed, looking in total disbelief that he'd started scarfing it down without even noticing at first. "You jackass."  
  
"I thought you wanted it!" he said, laughing a little.  
  
"Whatever, that's from the place we went to right down the block from here, I can get it anytime. But if you're not even going to notice what you put in your mouth..."  
  
As he reached over toward his plate with his fork, Kotetsu immediately pulled it forward and out of his reach. "Hey, no, not as long as those are my dumplings you're eating."  
  
"These are surprisingly good reheated, you know."  
  
"Dammit, give me a dumpling..."  
  
A moment later Barnaby had slid his barstool around to the end of the counter so that he sat on the corner closer to Kotetsu, and they were eating from both plates together.  
  
The apartment key that Barnaby had left on the edge of the counter caught Kotetsu's eye for some reason. Something silly he'd said earlier about watching Barnaby sleep randomly resurfaced in his head and drew his eyes over to the doorway to the hall that led to Barnaby's bedroom. He'd seen into the room a few times, and as far as he could tell the bed was always neatly made. Nothing about this apartment really felt lived-in.  
  
He looked to his side at Barnaby, whose eyes were fixed down on the mushrooms he was finishing off. There were a lot of things  _he_ often found himself wishing he could figure out about Barnaby without having to ask about them directly. Many of these things were closely associated with the idea of the place where Barnaby slept, which he was thinking about in way too much speculative detail right now.  
  
For instance, he wondered how much he wore to bed. And if he ever talked in his sleep, which was probably a mystery entirely unknown to mankind because Barnaby himself wouldn't know. And if there could be found in a drawer or slipped under the mattress any certain reading material with nothing to read in it, whether the pages would be full of women or just maybe not women. A lot of the time something about Barnaby seemed to forbid the very notion of either one, but who could tell, maybe he was only able to be so uninterested in such things out in the open because he was dutiful about taking care of himself in private often enough that he didn't get dysfunctionally repressed, and no, Kotetsu was not picturing that right now, he was just curious. Concerned. Nobody could have complete well-being living in a place as empty and plain as this apartment, much less never having their sheets the least bit messed up from anything.  
  
...Never curling inward on his side under the blankets, shuddering gently with stiff shoulders, mouth open with his breaths coming out in little heaves tight against the pillow, his hand slipped down into his pants and stroking himself as a merciful relief. But maybe there'd be a wave of slight shame, too, a kind of bittersweetness, when it gets to where he's fully into it and there's no keeping it gentle and quiet, because his soft moans and whines would be the only sounds in this whole cold place with its lonely rooms that still made Kotetsu kind of sad every time he was here, and maybe it was easier to just keep desires like this shut out as much as possible and stay focused on other things rather than remind himself in any way what he was going without.  
  
Wait, or maybe Kotetsu was partly just thinking of himself—himself as he'd been ever since he started spending so much time with Barnaby Brooks Jr., specifically. Clearly it was getting to be a problem.  
  
But he thought of how he'd never known Barnaby to show any interest in dating, being so unyieldingly private when it came to his personal life that he might as well be considered unavailable. He thought of everything he'd seen popping up on Barnaby's screen that one time the mayor's kid was here, flipping everything in his home inside-out every time he got upset. The many files that had started coming up after the remote got tossed to the floor were quite personal discoveries for them to have to see on accident, but none of the kind of private stuff one would be less surprised to find saved on the computer of someone single. Kotetsu could hope the truth of it was that it just did nothing for him at all, whether with a woman or a man or an image of either to look at or imagine, even when he didn't have unhealthily consuming distractions like looking for his parents' murderer. There were such people, right? That would be so much better to know than what Kotetsu was sadly pretty sure was the reality because he knew too much else about this kid now to be optimistic enough to imagine it was that simple.  
  
"Kotetsu?" Barnaby said, making him look up at him with a bit of a start. "Something wrong?"  
  
"Huh? No." He dug his fork into something to show him so, getting right back to eating.  
  
"You looked kind of...I don't know. Melancholy."  
  
"It's just...your apartment," he mumbled with his mouth full.  
  
"My apartment."  
  
"Yeah." He looked around at all the immaculately clean surfaces. "I mean...if you don't have to worry about anybody breaking in and stealing anything, is that the  _reason_  you don't keep a lot of stuff around?"  
  
Barnaby just leaned back in his seat and rolled his eyes up to the ceiling with a heavy sigh, looking like he couldn't begin to believe Kotetsu was back to this again.  
  
"I just don't get how you don't lose your mind in here. It would be thought unhealthy for a  _dog_  to be kept in a living space with so little stimulation."  
  
Barnaby turned his face down momentarily, pinching the bridge of his nose in a way Kotetsu always tried in earnest to take seriously as a reaction of irritation but couldn't help but find really endearing. Not cute, not like  _that,_  just endearing. There was a difference.  
  
"Kotetsu, you're doing that thing again," he hinted. "The thing I don't like, unless I've actually  _asked_  for your advice or your help, remember?"  
  
"Oh. Meddling. Right..." He raised his hands up in a sign of surrender, then got up and picked up his plate to take it over to the sink. "I didn't realize you'd still mind it so much now...Can't partners get concerned about each other?"  
  
"Within reason."  
  
He knew he was frowning a bit, but he said lightly, "Fair enough."  
  
As he rinsed his dish in the sink behind the bar, he thought Barnaby might actually have a point. Now that the moment had passed, he could hardly believe what he'd been wondering about and imagining before Barnaby interrupted his daydreaming. He once again noticed the key set on the counter, and it occurred to him only then that just by letting Kotetsu see where he always had a spare key hidden, Barnaby had once again demonstrated trust in him in some way. It was just a little thing, but he'd figured out by now that with Barnaby none of these things were little. It made him feel kind of guilty now. Of course he was never going to abuse the knowledge by actually coming in here to spy on Barnaby sleeping or search his room for evidence of his sexual preference or just steal his underwear like some creepy stalker. But all the same, he was sure if Barnaby knew the kind of thoughts he had about him sometimes it would probably make him uncomfortable and seem very invasive, maybe even like a betrayal in a way.  
  
"And only if it goes both ways, too," Barnaby added quietly once he'd turned the faucet off and was drying his hands.  
  
"What?" he said absently as he turned to face him, trying to follow now that he'd momentarily lost track of what they were talking about.  
  
"We can be concerned for each other, but it's only fair if it goes both ways, right? Are you going to tell me what's really on your mind or not?"  
  
Kotetsu knew he could be a pretty bad liar. He tried to keep his eyes fixed straight on Barnaby's, but they still wavered a little. "I  _have_  told you."  
  
"...Hm." Barnaby looked down as he got up from his seat and then said nothing more about it.  
  
On their way back out of the building, Barnaby put the spare key back where it had been placed before behind the statue. Without really thinking about it, Kotetsu averted his eyes a bit as if that could undo the damage done.

 

 

"I think I really need to get laid," he blurted out to Nathan the next day.  
  
Leaning against the circling banister in the center of the training center right next to him, Nathan choked a little on the pretzels in his mouth. Once his eyes had stopped watering and he'd managed to swallow, he looked to the side at him with still somewhat astonished eyes, and giggled. "Well, what are you waiting for, to get  _older?"_  
  
Kotetsu heard booming laughter coming from behind Nathan, and he looked past him with widening eyes to see Antonio doing stretches not even ten feet away. "Like you can talk, asshole," he said, getting pretty embarrassed now.  
  
"You said that pretty loud," he said flatly in defense, awkwardly keeping his eyes away from him and Nathan. "And...I'd say you're at least three years late in admitting it."  
  
Nathan looked over at Antonio, shielding one side of his mouth with his hand so that Kotetsu couldn't read his lips as he mouthed some question to him. Antonio put up six fingers in answer and Kotetsu cringed uneasily.  
  
Nathan looked back toward him with his lips formed in a disbelieving "O" and his fingers raising to cover them. "Oh, you poor thing," he gasped.  
  
"I'm flattered that you're so shocked," Kotetsu said dryly, grateful that it didn't seem like Nathan was going to pry for any more details about why it had been that long and how exactly Antonio could come up with a specific number. It was actually more like five and a half years now, not even that, but he was hardly going to volunteer any information just to correct him.  
  
Anyway, even five and a half, he had to admit, was pretty sad.  
  
"So where's this coming from all the sudden?" Nathan asked, turning back toward him.  
  
"I don't know, I guess it's all just finally building up too much. My mind's wandering too easily these days."  
  
Nathan examined him curiously with a finger over his lips, as if there was something more he'd be able to tell from Kotetsu's expression. "Hmm...Do you happen to get distracted like this more often when you're around your partner?" he asked with an impish smirk.  
  
How the hell... "What? You're kidding, right?"  
  
Nathan glanced around them to see that nobody was close enough to be listening anymore. "Oh, come on, you can tell me."  
  
Nathan was one of only two people in existence who happened to know from first-hand physical experience that Kotetsu liked men in addition to everyone else. The other was West Prior, a fellow delinquent from his school who'd earned the nickname "Scorcher" for always tearing his shitty old muscle car through the parking lot with an obnoxious screech and the warm smell of burnt rubber, and sadly enough the first person he ever kissed. Once when they saw each other outside while both skipping class, he'd let Kotetsu have a couple drinks from the bottle of vodka he'd snuck into school and after a while pressed him into the shadows and against the wall. They'd made out for no more than two minutes before Kotetsu wondered what the hell he was doing, freaked out a little when West wouldn't take any hints besides Kotetsu's conflicted hard-on and back off, and then punched him in the jaw and walked away.  
  
The experience with Nathan had not been much better, an amazingly undignified night exactly two years after Tomoe's death which had ended with Nathan as a happy drunk, him as a tremendously sad drunk, and the two of them nearly sleeping together before he once again wondered just in time what the hell he was doing. He was pretty sure he didn't remember any clothes ever coming off, but they'd made it to Nathan's bed and everything before Kotetsu remembered this was a friend he worked with whose face would potentially remind him for years to come of this totally depressing night of him overdoing it at the bar because he was having a crisis. After he muttered the third apology or so for being this year's King of Teases, Nathan just said sympathetically, "Oh honey, it's okay" and kissed him on the top of his head before turning the light off. Kotetsu had dozed off mumbling, "You're a good man, Mr. Seymour" and with them sort of cuddling, which felt nice enough while passing out drunk and full of stale two-years-old grief but just made a pretty embarrassing position to wake up in the next morning. In a weird way, though, the incident had cemented their friendship as it was now after Nathan further proved just how much of a solid guy he was by never telling a soul anything about this or even bringing it up with him again, which was a lot more than he could say about Scorcher.  
  
Still, how he guessed about Barnaby so easily he really didn't know.  
  
Kotetsu looked to the side with his arms crossed for a moment as he hesitated, then finally just said evasively, "I'm sure you get that way when you're around him, too."  
  
Nathan generously humored him by pretending to have to think about it, for all of one second. "Mm, no, I don't think so. I shamelessly flirt with him enough that I pretty much get it out of my system."  
  
"You think  _I_  should flirt with him?"  
  
"Oh,  _no."_  
  
He'd only been joking, but when it got that kind of a reaction Kotetsu tilted his head a bit in confusion. "What?"  
  
"You're  _different,_  idiot."  
  
"Why, because I'm his partner?"  
  
 _"Yes._  You should do nothing. Well, nothing  _stupid,_  Tiger. I'm serious. Maybe Handsome doesn't let anybody know it too easily, but it still doesn't take a genius to see he's probably the kind of person you have to be kind of careful with. You must know that, right?"  
  
"Sure. Jeez, it's not like I'm planning on letting him find out I'm one of the billion who'd jump his bones before he can say 'I'm so awesome I don't even need a catch phrase!'"  
  
Nathan snorted with light laughter at his imitation of how Barnaby talked.  
  
"I don't  _want_  to think of him that way at all," he went on. "Like I said, it's ridiculously distracting. And the worst part is knowing that my will is so weak after six years that if it actually were the slightest possibility, I would  _definitely_  go there. Even though everything's really good as it is now because we've finally started getting along as partners and friends and everything, and it was hard enough just for us to get that far, so it would probably be a terrible idea. I know it's not even a possibility, but just knowing...well, that brings me back to what I said in the first place."  
  
Nathan looked like he was having trouble not laughing, but he had also started smiling at him very fondly. It made Kotetsu feel like he was missing some joke. "Oh my. That  _is_  a problem," he replied at last, unhelpfully.  
  
Kotetsu's lips tightened in a smile and he just had to laugh, unable to believe how much he'd just said. "Goddamn," he muttered, reaching over into the bag of pretzels in Nathan's hands to grab some.

 

 

.  
.

2 WEEKS LATER

"Don't tell me that's a Mad Bear," Kotetsu said to Karina. They were outside the Apollon Media building at night, and while she stood with him waiting for her ride home he'd just spotted the stuffed animal of a familiar-looking hot pink color tucked under her arm.  
  
She grinned guiltily, holding the bear out enough to reveal its vacant-eyed face. "I needed to clean some stuff out of my locker," she explained. "I've had it around just as a silly memento...I guess that's a little morbid, huh?"  
  
He shrugged. "Not like it would be if we hadn't beat him."  
  
Karina's expression grew a little more serious. "Barnaby still hasn't been able to talk to Kriem yet, has he?"  
  
"No. She still hasn't recovered enough to tell us anything."  
  
The reminder of it seemed to settle over him like a dark shadow in the following moments while they both waited there side by side. He stared over at the bear held in her arm for a while. It was harmless now like she said, of course, but that mocking stare it had still bothered him somehow. It seemed to say,  _It's so obvious but you're never going to get it, Kotetsu._  
  
Something that didn't add up right, even now. He couldn't put his finger on it...  
  
"Hey," Karina said, snapping him out of it. "Everything alright, Tiger? You look like it's really depressing you."  
  
Kotetsu sighed, not knowing where to start. "Sometimes I get this bad feeling about what's going to happen when he's finally able to get some answers from her, and I don't know why. When I think about how it all happened now, there's almost something about it that doesn't feel right. Do you know what I mean?"  
  
She shook her head, looking honestly surprised by the suggestion. "No...Of course, I wouldn't know all the details that you do."  
  
"Yeah..."  
  
Karina seemed to think more deeply about it for a moment. "Well, Barnaby's sure been different since then, hasn't he? Just more..."  
  
"Agreeable." Kotetsu smiled, seeing that she wasn't sure if she should say it.  
  
"Well. Yes," she said awkwardly. "I can only assume it's because he's come to some peace with it. So I can see why you'd be worried that anything Kriem could tell him might take that away."  
  
"Right...He was  _obsessed_  before. Needing closure is one thing, but...I probably shouldn't be letting you know this much, but I'm talking about years and years of research filling up his harddrive, that kind of obsessed. I might have expected that nothing would ever feel like quite enough of a resolution after all that. But even though he still doesn't know the reason, for once in his life he must actually be able to see that  _not_  revisiting it in some other way once again might be better for him, because  _he's_  not that concerned about it." He shook his head with bewilderment. "It's just incredible how lucky he got, you know? After all that time, when the chance of him actually being able to find his parents' killer once he became a Hero was always a long shot, a chance to confront Jake Martinez just gets handed to him within months of the start of his career. It seemed almost too easy, so I keep waiting to find out it isn't over somehow. Or...maybe it's just me, and I just can't help worrying that it's all too good to be true."  
  
Karina seemed vaguely awed. She was looking at him like he might expect her to if he'd just gone off on an impressive-sounding rant in another language she hadn't known him to be fluent in and couldn't understand a word of.  
  
"What?"  
  
"I'm just...Wow. You really have learned to like him, haven't you?"  
  
He laughed mildly. "I don't know if I could describe what I  _do_  like about him," he admitted. "He's just...He's really worth having on your side, if you can get him. I don't know how else to put it."  
  
Karina looked like she could somewhat understand. "I can't even guess how you  _did_  finally make it work. For a long time you appeared to be the only one trying."  
  
He thought for a moment before replying. "You don't have to be a people person to get lonely," he said a bit quietly. "Everyone needs a balance between having space and having someone around that works for them, I guess."  
  
She smiled and said, "Now you've definitely told me too much."  
  
They heard a honk from the side of the street and looked over to see a car waiting.  
  
"Oh, that's me," she said. Before moving to go, she looked down at her Mad Bear and turned it in her hand like she was looking at all sides of it in reconsideration. Then she lifted it up high and tossed it a few feet over right into a nearby garbage can.  
  
Kotetsu laughed enthusiastically as he pat her on the head in goodbye. "See you, Blue Rose," he said.  
  
"Goodnight," she said with a wave as she headed down the steps.  
  
He heard a group of people talking far behind him and turned around to see Keith, Nathan, and Barnaby finally leaving the building together. On his way to go meet Barnaby, he passed the garbage can where the stuffed bear's face seemed to be staring directly at him.  
  
What was it that seemed wrong about the whole picture? Kotetsu liked to think that besides having the book mostly closed on Barnaby's parents' murders, he might have had a little something to do with how much more content with his life Barnaby seemed now, but he still wondered. Sometimes Barnaby seemed so relieved with that burden gone that it was almost as if he'd been waiting for any reason to finally move forward, much more desperately than he'd been looking for whatever pieces of the puzzle of his past he could find. What had been holding him back that firmly?  
  
And there was the way Barnaby had finally figured out the killer had been Jake right before Ouroboros demanded his release. He had never even realized what a coincidence that was until Antonio pointed it out a while ago, and now every once in a while he wondered about it, but what  _could_  it possibly mean?  
  
"What's wrong with  _you_?" Barnaby asked when he joined his side and began to walk with him.  
  
"Me?" he asked, a bit surprised that he actually looked noticeably disturbed. "Oh, nothing, I'm swell. Just fine."  
  
Barnaby cringed a little and said mockingly, "Did I misunderstand or did you actually just say 'swell'?"  
  
It brought an uncontrollable big grin to his face, and he threw an arm around his neck as they kept walking.  
  
"Seriously, what's with you, old man?" His voice had the smallest hint of amusement in it, and the way he brushed Kotetsu off of him seemed more shy and embarrassed than truly annoyed.  
  
Kotetsu had already forgotten about those things that were occasionally bothering him now. They never seemed to occur to him when he was actually with Barnaby. It was both of them who had found themselves having an easier time ever since the Ouroboros debacle was over, and they'd started getting along more naturally. In just the past few months, Kotetsu had come to like having a partner so much it was now hard to imagine doing his job without Barnaby. And though he always seemed to find reasons to still be concerned about him, he could see how less burdened Barnaby was now. If he just pictured what he had been like when he first met him, with a certain shadow in the always-serious look in his eyes which had lifted now, he was too glad to worry about the rest.


	2. I'm Not the Man They Think I Am At Home

 

.  
.

3 WEEKS LATER

"Got plans for your days off?" Kotetsu asked Barnaby while he was giving him a ride home.  
  
"Some," Barnaby answered curtly.  
  
When a few more seconds passed and he hadn't bothered to elaborate, Kotetsu grinned with inner amusement. "Okay. Hot date or what?"  
  
"I'm getting a new sound system installed in my apartment."  
  
"That sounds great. Though...I've never even known you to listen to any music at home. Or really anywhere."  
  
"I usually find it too distracting. But I did try to play something last night and it wasn't working, so clearly I need a new system." He meticulously explained this with a tone of boredom that seemed to say " _What are we even talking about, why do you care?_ "  
  
"Clearly," Kotetsu agreed.  
  
"I might also visit a friend I haven't seen in a while. Someone who worked in our household taking care of me when I was a kid...You're probably going to see your family."  
  
He shook his head. "Nope, I'll still be on call just in case something serious comes up. And I'm a little behind on paperwork, so I'll probably be going in at least on Sunday."  
  
"Ah." Barnaby seemed a little surprised. After a moment of silent thought, he asked, "Why is it you hardly ever take time off? If you don't mind me asking. You  _talk_  about your daughter all the time, I'd think you'd want to see her as often as you can."  
  
Kotetsu was completely unprepared for that. "Oh...Of course I  _want_  to," he said with a sigh. "But I don't know that she's so eager to see  _me_ all the time. I can't tell her what I do, and when I'm always having to break my promises it gets hard to try to make it up to her."  
  
"So what?" Barnaby smirked for an instant, and his next comment was said in a vaguely teasing way. "When somebody acts like they don't care to have you around much, usually that doesn't do a thing to discourage you."  
  
Out of the corner of his eye, Kotetsu saw him glancing over at him again. Whatever Barnaby saw on his face must have made it clear he couldn't make this go over well by making light of it.  
  
"Sorry," he said, sounding more uneasy now as if thinking he'd said too much. "I'm sure you must have your reasons, I'm not trying to...You should just understand, even if you aren't always appreciated, it doesn't mean you aren't needed."  
  
"Sure, Kaede needs a dad," he said, muttering low and reluctantly. "But most of the time it seems practically impossible to be the kind of one she needs."  
  
When he was made to say it out loud, something in him recognized for a fleeting moment how ridiculous it sounded.  _"Well, tough,"_  he heard in his head from long ago, the night he'd had to take Tomoe to the hospital with a broken ankle and they'd had a horrible argument while in the waiting room. It was a memory that had somehow become more and more painful with the passing of time rather than fading in relevance.  
  
At hearing those words, Barnaby had kept his eyes fixed ahead with a sudden stiffness about him. He shifted his grip on the steering wheel and simply said, "I see."  
  
It wasn't like Barnaby looked angry, but it was obvious there was something quite different from "I see" that he might have liked to say. And that memory, however it had surfaced, was flaring up now as a burn of growing anger putting him firmly on the defensive, making him feel almost like he was back there fighting with her again. It was so unusual and unexpected for Barnaby to actually express any kind of curiosity or concern about Kotetsu's personal life, but now he thought he was starting to see exactly where these questions were coming from, which just set him on edge a bit more. Barnaby had been just four when that unimaginable nightmare left him an orphan. The same age Kaede was when...  
  
It wasn't the same, though. It wasn't.  
  
"I understand that you must have been really lonely growing up, Bunny," he said, making himself keep his tone conciliatory. "I know it was really bad. But don't make this about you."  
  
Barnaby had stopped at a light, and when he looked at him briefly, his expression was unapologetic. "Kind of seems you're the one making it about me," he said, almost coolly. It was like a challenge. Sorry, just saying it for your own good, old man. He still thought this was cute.  
  
Fortunately, five years of marriage and about that many years of an occasionally tumultuous relationship before that had taught Kotetsu something about controlling himself when he needed to be careful not to say anything he'd really regret. So at first he fell silent at that instead of replying with anything horribly easy and pretty irrelevant he might have been thinking like  _What would you know about what it's like, nobody depends on you, you've never had to worry about losing the only job you can do if you aren't entirely committed_  or  _All you have to do is show up on screen, flashing your stupid fake smile and flipping your beautiful fucking blond hair in that way that tilts your head back and makes people uncontrollably think about licking something off your neck, and they throw money at you like they would at some stripping harlot._  
  
Instead he only said in a low voice, repeating Barnaby's words from a few weeks ago, "'Within reason.' Got it?"  
  
When Barnaby said nothing back, he took it to mean he understood. In the silence between them that followed, he soon found himself able to think a lot more clearly again, and it suddenly seemed strange that he'd almost gotten so worked up about it. The feelings he'd been having just minutes ago already seemed unexplainable and ridiculous as he realized it hadn't been Barnaby he was really angry at.  
  
By the time Barnaby pulled the car up to his block, his expression was mild and he seemed to have gotten similarly contrite. The two of them could still get under each other's skin now and then, but this felt completely different and new in a way that had simply turned awkward at some point after they'd stopped talking.  
  
"I'm sorry I brought it up," Barnaby said as Kotetsu got out of the car.  
  
"Yeah," he just said back.  
  
As a brief last exchange the words were not quite warm, but they seemed to leave the thing reasonably resolved. He was sure when they saw each other again in a couple days, it would practically be forgotten.

 

 

There was no window in Barnaby's bedroom, only very dim light shining in from somewhere outside the door. Dark walls, dark sheets, and in the center of this cave, calm green eyes opening. They looked up to see him with realization but not surprise.  
  
This sure wasn't like a lot of sex dreams Kotetsu had ever had before, if that was where this was going. With Barnaby lying across his bed before him, he bent over him on all fours, not touching him yet, just framing him protectively. Then without a word they were kissing, deeply and heavily. When he then kissed Barnaby on the forehead, that made him blink with some sharpening awareness, and a bit of nervousness and confusion came into his eyes.  
  
 _It's just me,_ Kotetsu assured him.  
  
 _How did you get in?_ he demanded.  
  
 _You let me in. Remember?_  
  
He shook his head, looking like he wasn't sure.  _No..._  
  
 _Yeah._  Kotetsu took both his wrists and held them down on the mattress by his head, fanned out his fingers in Barnaby's palms to gently pry his hands open, and then interlaced their fingers together securely. He leaned his forehead down against his as he kept speaking.  _You're okay. I'm not going to take anything. Just want to make you feel good. Let me do that?_  
  
 _Want to make yourself feel good,_  Barnaby said. It was more like a cold correction,  _So naïve,_  than an accusation.  
  
 _Sure._  He then spoke so close to him that his lips brushed against his as he kept whispering.  _But I won't hurt or use you or screw you over, see. And maybe you'd like to make me feel good, too...?_  
  
Barnaby shuddered a little. Slowly he opened his mouth, let Kotetsu press his tongue inside and run his hands everywhere, feeling the shape of him in the dark. Barnaby took hold of his hand to guide it down and pressed it over his cock, and Kotetsu heard his breath catch as he started rubbing him gently, cupping him through his pants. As it went on, Barnaby seemed to start looking at him with more familiarity and easiness.  
  
Then Kotetsu heard something, or felt something; either way it made him look back behind him toward the open bedroom door.  _What's that?_  
  
 _What are you talking about?_  Barnaby asked, practically in a gasp as Kotetsu kept touching him. But then he knew it was here, too. Something or someone had snuck in. He gripped Kotetsu's back hard, wanting, getting angry, both.  _Idiot. You let it get in behind you._  
  
 _No, I swear. That was already here._  Dropping his hands to the mattress, he looked again and there it was. Sitting on the shelf at the top of the closet, one of those ugly stuffed bears was staring at them with its empty black eyes. Inanimate and harmless, but...  
  
 _It becomes something else when we're not looking,_  he said, looking back at Barnaby. It was the only logical explanation. Damn, how had they been so stupid? What were they going to do?   
  
 _Impossible._  Barnaby had started sort of panicking now, struggling to get Kotetsu off of him.   
  
 _But Ouroboros..._  
  
 _Ouroboros is gone. She'll tell us that when she wakes up._  Now freed from Kotetsu's protective cover, Barnaby was getting himself back under the blankets.  _This isn't working, you fucked up. Please just get out. Make sure you close the door behind you this time, and I told you about getting that window fixed. Cats and all._  
  
 _No, I'm not leaving you alone with that thing._  What was going on? There was something right in front of his face, something very wrong with Barnaby's life, and if he didn't get it out of here nobody else would, nobody else had ever gotten close enough to see it. But he was already a lot less close than before, kneeling on the mattress three feet or so away from Barnaby, as the bed seemed to grow...  
  
When Kotetsu's eyes came open, the first thing he was aware of was the pang of hardness between his legs. He groaned at this with annoyance, rolling right off of the couch where he'd dozed off last night.  
  
Well,  _that_  had not made any sense at all. He dragged his feet clumsily all the way to the bathroom, kicking some beer cans strewn in his path. Drinking before bed, that would always do it.  
  
He promptly got rid of the dream in the shower, closing his eyes and starting to stroke himself the moment he stepped in under the water. It was good while it lasted, and then he had a whole day to himself ahead of him while all the other Heroes would be enjoying their time off, and thinking about it kind of made him feel like he'd just like to go back to bed.  
  
At least it made him feel a little better, and in a strange way less alone, to remember that the most exciting thing Barnaby was doing with his time today was trying out some new speakers. And to think he once felt like they had nothing in common.

 

  
.  


10 YEARS AGO

Tomoe's favorite law show she had to catch every week was on. She was relaxing back against Kotetsu's chest and between his legs as they shared a place on the couch with their feet up on the recliner. Now a couple months into her pregnancy, she was developing a habit of occasionally keeping her hands rested over her stomach in a way that seemed unconscious. Her hands kept flying up to hit him on the leg, however, whenever he was distracting her with his own hands.  
  
"I'm trying to pay attention!" she said, giggling a little and trying to squirm away as he put little kisses along her neck and shoulder.  
  
"Too late anyway," he said. "You probably already missed the most important details about the case earlier while you were in the kitch—"  
  
" _Shhh_!" she said, reaching back and failing amusingly to cover his mouth with her hands without turning around.  
  
By the time of the next commercial break, he'd finally settled for playing with her hair for a while and was arranging it in a long braid.  
  
"Heidi mentioned something about this show at the office today," Tomoe said, "and then everyone got in this  _big_ debate over whether Perry Dubois is actually that hot after I said I don't understand the big deal about him."  
  
"Which one's he?" he asked. "The guy who plays Warren?"  
  
"Yeah, everyone  _loves_  him." As he laid the finished braid over her shoulder, she turned to sit sideways across his lap so she could look at him. "I like the show and everything, but I'm tired of seeing his face on cologne ads and stuff all over town, you know?"  
  
"Well..." Kotetsu's lips tightened as he tried not to grin.  
  
She raised an eyebrow. "Seriously?"  
  
"You really don't think so?"  
  
"Nuh-uh. Not hot."  
  
"He  _is_!"  
  
"He's not even that talented, and he looks like such a cocky sleazeball," she said, now in teasing laughter.  
  
"Honestly, why else do you think I tolerate watching this show with you?"  
  
She laughed even more, hitting him on the chest. "I don't know, there's his assistant Esther, too."  
  
He pursed his lips in consideration for a second. "Well, yeah, I'd say she's just as good-looking. But she doesn't appear nearly as much as Warren."  
  
"Jeez, it's lucky for me you have better taste in women than men," she said haughtily.  
  
"Lucky for me you have lousy taste altogether," he muttered with a smirk.  
  
"Aww, shut up." She circled her arms up around his neck as he turned his head down to kiss her.  
  
When the first scene to come on after the commercial break was over showed Dubois's character at home with no shirt on, Tomoe immediately covered his eyes to annoy him, laughing as he struggled to get her hands off him saying, "Hey, pay attention, you're missing important stuff!"  
  
They switched over to another channel once the episode was over, and Kotetsu eventually laid his head back and closed his eyes to the droning of the news, feeling Tomoe also getting still and calm where she lay curled up against him with her head on his chest.  
  
It seemed he was half-asleep later, lulled by the soft noise of the television, because it was the sudden absence of the noise after Tomoe had picked up the remote and turned it off that woke him up.  
  
He felt Tomoe's whisper close to his face. "Kotetsu..."  
  
When he opened his eyes, blinking and taking in the surroundings in the now dim room without the screen on, he found that she seemed to be listening intently for something, her eyes fixed away from him on nothing specific. She was sitting very still.  
  
He started murmuring, "What—?"  
  
Tomoe lay a tense hand on his chest and finally looked at him. "I think there's someone in the bedroom," she whispered, and then her eyes went back to the closed door with a very uneasy look.  
  
Instantly getting attentive, he followed her gaze in the direction of their room. The idea that someone could have broken in _seemed_ ridiculous. The apartment they had then was in one of the more dangerous areas of Sternbild, all so Kotetsu could be close to work when he had to report there in a hurry, and all the windows in residential buildings around here had bars over them. But with how many NEXT were walking around these days, one could never be sure that would keep anyone out. Especially in cities like this, sometimes there were stories...  
  
As they both stayed still and silent for a few seconds, first Kotetsu heard nothing. Then Tomoe drew in a nervous, slow gasp of a breath when there came a quiet creaking from inside the room that sounded like the closet door moving on its hinges. Kotetsu's eyes narrowed with immediate determination as he glared at the door, tightening an arm around his wife. "Oh,  _hell_  no," he said in a low voice.  
  
And at that, Tomoe actually let out a nervous laugh, shrinking in against him and covering a hand over her mouth. He hooked an arm under both her knees to lift her off of him and set her to the side on the couch. As soon as he stood up, he activated his power and then looked back at her, pointing downward to signal her to stay hidden down low. She sunk down against the couch, just barely peeking over the top to watch.  
  
"Hey!" he shouted in warning, serious enough that he managed to sound pretty threatening, or so he hoped.  
  
When he then approached the door, he heard soft sounds of someone stirring inside the room once more. Scurrying off in fear, Kotetsu thought. Yeah, he was pretty scary right now.  
  
"Whoever you are, you better be ready for a professional ass-whooping!" he said as he gripped the doorknob.  
  
He threw the door open dramatically, and then yelled in surprise when something shot past his feet.  
  
He and Tomoe looked down at the thin, slightly sickly-looking white cat that had just darted into the middle of the room, then looked back up at each other. Kotetsu knew one of them was going to start laughing first any moment.  
  
He was hoping it would be Tomoe.  
  
"Um..." Kotetsu put up his index finger. "You might have had a point about how we need to tell the landlord about that weak latch on the window."  
  
"I  _told you_ ," she said, getting up from the couch.  
  
"You have to admit even  _you_  never expected something would be able to squeeze through the bars while it had fallen open."  
  
Tomoe shook her head, looking over at the cat that was mewing pathetically yet didn't look very easy about approaching either one of the people in the room. "This city, I swear," she said with a sigh of annoyance. "Poor thing...What should we do? You don't think it'll figure out how to get back in, do you?"  
  
"Maybe if we left some milk at the window that would keep him happy enough he won't keep trying to sneak in and watch the news."  
  
"Grown cats aren't actually supposed to have milk, Kotetsu," she said, slipping slightly into the know-it-all tone that she'd never completely lost since high school.  
  
"Fine, I don't know!" he said with an exaggerated shrug, and his light irritation made her finally start smiling in amusement.  
  
He was starting to edge his way closer to the cat. He got about five feet away and then darted forward to grab it from the floor. With his Hundred Power still working, the cat didn't even have a chance to see him coming and try to dodge him.  
  
" _Oh,_  he  _smells_ ," he realized out loud, making a face. "Alright now, kitty, I think you've just gotten yourself lost..." He quickly adjusted his hold on the cat as it tried to squirm out of his arms. Figuring he better get it right out of here before his power got close to running out, he turned to take it back to the window in the bedroom.  
  
As soon as he started into a brisk walk, he ran right into Tomoe. She fell over like she'd been side-swiped by a car, letting out a shrill yelp of pain as his heightened hearing picked up the sound of breaking bones. In an instant the cat had dropped out of his hands as a seizing horror sent Kotetsu backing right away from her, covering five feet in the blink of an eye and pressing himself back against the nearest wall.  
  
" _Tomoe._ " In his panic, his voice barely came out.  
  
In the middle of her fall, she'd toppled to the side and hit her face hard against the shelf beside her. She was gasping with a hand flying to the side of her face, eyes squeezed closed as she waited for the worst of the pain to pass.  
  
"Oh no," Kotetsu moaned, raising his hands over his eyes miserably for a moment. "I didn't know you were coming behind me, I didn't know you were there,  _fuck_..."  
  
"Don't, it's okay," she rasped quietly, every word coming out sounding like a wince. "I know...Hey,  _get off."_  The cat had jumped onto the coffee table and was walking all over the greeting cards she was working on making; she leaned to the right just enough to reach out and push it back off to the floor.  
  
Tomoe looked down at her right foot, lifted up her knee just a little to try to move her leg, and cringed. When she looked back at him still standing there like he was paralyzed, her eyes were now tearing up a little and something terrible, something other than the physical pain, started creeping into them. " _Why are you over there_?" she said.  
  
He widened his eyes, now only feeling worse as he realized what he was doing. It seemed all in a second he'd reverted back to what had been reflexive for him when he was still just a kid. He hadn't even thought about it, he'd just run away from her and stayed back as if he still needed to be careful not to touch anyone at all when he was like this.  
  
Finally shaking himself out of it, he went forward and dropped to her side. He put his hand to her face where she'd hit it as he started looking her over. "Where did you...?"  
  
"I think it's just my ankle," she said. "Kotetsu..."  
  
"You can walk on the other leg?" he asked, lifting her arm up by the wrist to hook it over his neck.  
  
"Yeah, it got pretty banged up but that's all. Kotetsu, look at me."  
  
Her voice was much more steady now as she gripped her hand on his arm to make him stop for a moment. Kotetsu went still and finally managed to look directly at her face, knowing his eyes still must have been wild with the fear that still hadn't quite died down in his stomach since the instant he heard her scream.  
  
"It's not that bad," she said softly. "Okay?"  
  
He let out a final shuddering breath, getting the last of it out, and then nodded. She held onto him around his neck as he clutched her around the waist and carefully lifted her up to stand on her left leg. Just then his wristband started beeping.  
  
"Ah,  _crap,"_ he said under his breath, looking down at the blinking light.  
  
Tomoe put her hand on the shelf to support herself so she could keep standing without his help. As he left her side to go to the closet at the other end of the room, she asked, "Aren't you even going to answer it?"  
  
"Are you kidding, why? Should I get the wheelchair or the crutches?" He got injured on the job often enough that they already had a varied supply of such items. His power drained just as he started looking around for either one, and then with his eyesight returned to normal he had to switch the closet light on to see.  
  
"Doesn't matter. Wheelchair, I guess. You've  _never_  ignored a call, don't you at least want to know what's going on?"  
  
"If it's something serious, why should I waste their time?" He brought the wheelchair over and folded it out.  
  
"It's not like I'm dying," she said in a sigh as he helped lower her down into it. They were silent the rest of the time going down to the first floor and outside. While they rode in a taxi to the hospital, Kotetsu got another call and answered it this time to explain that he was in the middle of a personal emergency and had just used his powers anyway, as Tomoe had a point that it might make him look irresponsible to just ignore it, after all. He almost wished he hadn't answered, especially with her there to hear; it was a fire somewhere on a college campus that couldn't be put out because it seemed some crazy NEXT who must have started it was freezing every drop of water in the area. Kotetsu said he'd report in if he was available later and they still hadn't stopped the guy.  
  
While they were waiting in the emergency room, he still stayed mostly quiet sitting beside Tomoe. He kept feeling like he should be saying something, doing more than just sitting there not touching her, but he couldn't help it. He couldn't stop thinking about the moment it had happened and feeling almost sick over it again and again.  
  
There was a TV up on one wall in a corner that most of the other waiting patients were sitting near with their eyes glued to the screen. It was faced at a bad angle for Kotetsu to be able to see even vaguely from far away what it was showing, but Tomoe had already perked up curiously a moment ago when she heard "back to a  _Hero TV_  live broadcast." After a while she finally looked to the side at him and said, "We don't have to sit here. Don't you want to go watch?"  
  
She reached over and clutched his wrist when he didn't answer, pulling him out of his own head. "Not really," he said. "Not right now."  
  
He heard her sigh a little and she drew her hand away, practically dropping it dejectedly. "Shoot. That cat is probably going to piss all over the place before we get home."  
  
The mention of it brought other things to his mind. He looked down at the shallow bump of her belly, like a bomb she was holding in there, and the horrible feeling crawled over him all over again. "This is why I don't like the idea of bringing up a kid here," he said.  
  
"Because there are stray cats?" she asked with a confused look.  
  
"Because we have to be so paranoid about every single noise that might be somebody breaking in."  
  
Tomoe sighed again, with much more exasperation. This was a discussion that had come up before. "And _I_ don't like the idea of bringing up a kid practically on my own."  
  
"I told you it wouldn't be like that."  
  
"But you'll have to be away enough as it is when you're out late working so many nights. You having an apartment here and needing to leave the city every time you visit home, that's too much." She shook her head suddenly, looking like she hated to think about it right now, and added before he could respond to that, "Forget it, this is a terrible time to try to have this conversation with you."  
  
"What do you mean?" he asked, now a bit irritated. "Why?"  
  
"Because you're all sullen and hating yourself too much right now." She gestured down toward her injured foot. "You're making way too much of this."  
  
He looked down at his lap, picking at a small stain on his pants, and muttered in a dull tone, "I'm sorry I'm such lousy company."  
  
Tomoe looked a bit apologetic. "That's not the point," she said, more gently. "Be sullen and depressing, I don't care. But be here _with me._  I hate when you still sometimes get like this, you sort of...shut me out and get so withdrawn like it would be some burden on me not to just deal with things on your own...Even when you're dealing with a lot or not being the best company I want you to come home to me, you know. I'd miss you too often if I could only see you on TV most days of the week."  
  
"But come on, you really see us staying in that apartment forever? You weren't even crazy about the place from the beginning."  
  
"We can get a different apartment, but there's no way I want to move back home. Of course I have worries about how dangerous it can be here, and you know I'd like to be able to see my family and your mom more. But have you forgotten how much you disliked growing up there?"  
  
"Because it was especially difficult being different in a place like that," he said. "In a community that small people forget nothing you've done and you can't risk letting secrets out."  
  
"Well, you never know...Any kid of yours could end up being different, too. There are those recent studies. They may be pretty inconclusive, but as far as I understand they seem to point to  _something._ "  
  
"But not necessarily that it's hereditary, because there's no clear pattern that can explain it that way," Kotetsu said. "Thankfully. If it  _were_  that way it'd probably be better for me not to have kids at all."  
  
When she immediately went very stiff and her eyes widened just a little, he knew he'd screwed up. Bad.  
  
"Oh, Tomoe..." He shook his head. "I'm not—"  
  
"That's a terrible thing to say," she said quietly, shifting in her seat in the wheelchair with a sudden restlessness. "What's wrong with you?"  
  
"Look, I'm not saying I'd... _My_  parents didn't care any less about me when it turned out I was like this. Or at least, you know, with my dad  _that_  was never the problem," he added off-handedly, really not wanting to touch  _that_  subject any more than necessary. "They did the best they could to help me deal with it, but I still had a really hard time. All I meant was I'd hate for my kid to have to go through that."  
  
"Well,  _tough_ ," she said, her voice now coming out stronger; if they hadn't been sitting in a mostly empty end of the waiting room, they surely would be drawing a lot of attention now. "This isn't anything hypothetical, Kotetsu. We are  _having a child._  You can't just say things like that anymore! You want our son or daughter to grow up hearing those kinds of ideas? Even if we were both normal, there'd  _still_  be a small chance the baby could turn out to be a NEXT. Did you ever think about that?"  
  
When he just sat in a sad silence after that, unable to think of what to say, she raised a hand to her face and dabbed her palm over one eye to quickly catch a tear.  
  
"Right...you never thought about having kids at all. Or getting married, or any of it." As he opened his mouth she cut him off, adding, "I know, I know you  _want_  this. But it's not enough to just want it. I guess it would be a lot easier for you, having your family far away."  
  
"Don't be ridiculous," he said automatically, his voice uncontrollably turning a little hard.  
  
"You might as well not even be here if you're just going to sit around beating yourself up," she said, crossing her arms. "Go to work, you could probably still try to help even without your powers. That's where you want to be anyway."  
  
His mouth dropped open a little in shock. They were the kind of words he'd never in a million years expected to hear from her, even if they would have made more sense to him than her completely selfless and unfailing support. "Tomoe..."  
  
The tears were running liberally down her face now. "Don't look at me like that," she said with a sniffle, wiping at her eyes.  
  
He swallowed and then his voice came out faintly. "You've always told me you understand my job is going to interfere with my personal life sometimes, but it's okay. That it's too important for me to worry about not being able to put you first..."  
  
She shook her head in a jerking movement, putting her purse down in her lap and grabbing the wheels of her chair. "I never told you to use it as an excuse."  
  
"Please, Tomoe, just—What are you doing?" He held onto the arm of her wheelchair as she started trying to steer herself away.  
  
"I don't care if you're not going to watch," she said bitterly, pushing his hand off. "I want to see what's going on."  
  
When she went over where she could see the TV screen, she only got to watch a couple minutes of coverage before her name was finally called and she was taken back to get attention. At first Kotetsu just stayed where he was, looking restlessly down at his callband for a moment of fleeting consideration, even though he knew he couldn't really go. But soon he couldn't just sit there anymore, and he got up to go watch the program. Somehow with Tomoe out of the room, it was easier for him to have interest in it, and the longer he watched the more it started to clear his head and make him feel a little better. Most of the fire had finally been put out now that the culprit was trying to flee the scene, and they needed only to close in on and catch him. He laughed out loud a bit when he spotted Antonio in the distance in one shot getting pulled out of the frame because Red Wave's cape had caught on one of his horns. He hoped that wouldn't get edited out in the reruns so Tomoe could see it.  
  
When she came back out all fixed up with a cast, he was waiting in the same seat as before with two cups of coffee. She approached him in her chair with a tired, halfway resigned expression. He held one cup out to her and said regretfully, "It's not very hot anymore."  
  
She took it anyway. After taking a sip, she grimaced a little. "Not at all."  
  
"You want to get another one?"  
  
She bit her lip for a second in thought. "Okay."  
  
He showed her to the area where all the vending machines were, and she got up to stand on one foot in front of the coffee machine. Kotetsu went to her side and grabbed her waist to steady her more. "Should you be...doing that?"  
  
She just shrugged as she started putting coins in.  
  
"If you're not supposed to put any weight on it at all yet—"  
  
"I need more change," she said, reaching into one of his pockets.  
  
He rolled his eyes at her typical stubbornness as she dug around until she found the last coin she needed.  
  
After she had her full cup of steaming hot coffee, she leaned toward the machine so Kotetsu could let go of her and turned to rest her back against it and face him. As she stood blowing on her coffee, he crossed his arms and looked down at the floor for a while. Then she stopped blowing on it, but didn't drink it either, didn't do anything for a moment, and said quietly and sadly, "I didn't think this was still a problem for you."  
  
Her sympathy was even harder to take than her just being angry with him. With a frustrated sigh, he said, "When I'm injuring my wife? Yeah, then it  _is_  still a problem."  
  
"This is nothing like what happened with your brother when you were  _nine._  This was entirely my mistake. Come on, I know it's best to keep my distance when you're powered up, but I was overconfident that nothing could happen and got in your way."  
  
"It doesn't matter, if I was being more careful I should have  _heard_  you behind me. I could hear everyone in the building snoring but didn't even pay attention to where—"  
  
"When you can hear _everything_  within half a mile, how are you even supposed to be able to tell exactly how close somebody is just from the sound of their heartbeat? I know you're not  _that_ good."  
  
That got him to smile, just a little, before he knew his face grew a bit pained again as he looked closely at her. The side of her face that had gotten hurt was swelling and bruising horribly. "It's just...what something like this happening brings me back to. I can't help it, it's hard for it not to scare the hell out of me."  
  
She shook her head slowly, looking bewildered. "What I just can't understand is how you know you can catch a cat while you're in that state without hurting it, but still you've somehow got it in your head that you can't take care of anyone. That you can't be a father. I know you had this state of mind for a long time that it wasn't ever going to be in the cards for you. But you don't have to worry about being alone anymore."  
  
He hesitated a while before he could say it, so softly and weakly, the thing he could barely even stand to think. "What if I'd done worse than just broken your ankle? What if I'd...the baby...?"  
  
She circled one arm tight around his middle, pulling him a step forward, and looked straight up at his face. "And what if somebody had really been breaking into our home?"  
  
As she kept looking at him with that even gaze, something in him reluctantly began to calm. She reached for his hand and squeezed it lightly. "Let's go home and take care of that furball."  
  
As they rode back, Kotetsu was quiet in thought for a while and finally told her, "I don't want to move back home. You're right, I hated it there and I still wouldn't want to be there most of the time."  
  
She just put her head on his shoulder and said, "We don't have to talk about it now."  
  
"No, I'm serious. I know we still can't quite afford the kind of place where we'd like to be settled for good, but we can get an apartment in a nicer part of Sternbild for now."  
  
She smiled softly with her eyelids falling shut. "Okay."  
  
Something melted inside him as he looked to the side at her then, completely calming him for the first time in hours. He leaned his head against hers as she put an arm loosely around him, resting her hand on his shoulder. He raised her hand from his shoulder to the side of his face, closing his eyes as he pressed it flat against his cheek. "I love you so much," he whispered. "If anything happened to you...I don't know how I'd..."  
  
"Shhh," she said, almost too softly to hear. "I love you, too."


	3. How To Recognize Common Urban Pests

 

 

  
6 MONTHS AFTER THE DEATH OF JAKE MARTINEZ

It happened when they were having a drink together at Barnaby's. The thing Kotetsu didn't mean to happen, which just snuck up on him.  
  
He and Barnaby were celebrating that they'd both gotten at least one place ahead of the other heroes in points in the past month. Maybe Kotetsu didn't care all that much about earning points for their own sake, but if the amount he had was a reliable indication of how well he was doing his job, then the truth was becoming undeniable: he worked much better with Barnaby as a partner than without him. In the last half year he'd been saving more lives, making more arrests, and even damaging less property than he ever had during any other six-month period of his career. In fact, the two of them were totally kicking ass together, by  _any_ standards. It was their teamwork rather than any quantifiable accomplishments that he'd felt so much like drinking to more than anything else. Though he didn't make any of this known, he had a feeling Barnaby maybe got the idea, not that he usually needed a whole lot of convincing to open up a good wine as long as he had someone to drink it with.  
  
For a while they'd had the television on as some background entertainment they were half-watching while they sat beside each other, Kotetsu relaxing in a chair he and Barnaby had dragged out from his bedroom for him to use. Now as if to prove Kotetsu wrong about his observation that he never seemed to listen to music, Barnaby had put on something bass-heavy and kind of darkly atmospheric.  
  
"What is this stuff you're listening to anyway?" Kotetsu asked after a while.  
  
Barnaby rolled his head to the side to look over at him with a bored sort of sigh. "They're called Warsaw," he said. "Sorry I don't have anything more old-fashioned for your ancient ears."  
  
"Actually, I kind of like it."  
  
He gave a light laugh. "You're just saying that."  
  
"Nah." Kotetsu started bobbing his head to the beat.  
  
"No, don't—" Barnaby immediately started shaking his head with his look of second-hand embarrassment Kotetsu was quite used to having directed at him by now. "Please don't do that."  
  
Kotetsu stopped with a shrug and took the bottle of wine from the little table attached to Barnaby's chair to refill his glass. When he turned back forward, he got up suddenly from his seat.  
  
"Hey—" He rushed forward to where he'd tossed his jacket to the floor earlier and snatched it up off the carpet, right before something he'd spotted crawling across the floor toward it could touch it.  
  
"What?" Barnaby asked, sitting up. Then he noticed the little dark dot moving across the room and squinted to try to see it better.  
  
"It's one of those pain-in-the-ass gray beetle things," Kotetsu said eloquently, leaning over to get a good look. "Antonio has those in his apartment, too."  
  
Barnaby frowned as he stood up to go look at it. "This damn city..."  
  
"Stomp on it!" Kotetsu said, as he'd taken off his shoes at the door.  
  
"Are you kidding me?" his partner answered, looking around for something else they could squash it with. "These boots cost more than your monthly utilities."  
  
"Fine, wimp." He looked around the room to quickly evaluate their available resources, then pointed over to the small stack of mail Barnaby had left on the floor by his chair. "Give me that magazine, it's getting away..."  
  
The bug was disappearing into the less well-lit parts of the room. By the time Kotetsu had the magazine rolled up and ready in hand, he thought he'd seen it hugging the edge of the floor where it sunk down a level, but when they turned all the lights on for a moment they could see no sign of it.  
  
"Crap," he said. "Now it's gonna lay eggs in your fancy carpet and legions of them will be eating holes out of your designer clothes for lunch."  
  
Not amused by Kotetsu's teasing smile, Barnaby gave his arm an annoyed shove. Kotetsu must have been starting to get drunk because it actually upset his balance and had him swaying for a moment with a low laugh.  
  
For the next hour or so, they kept talking about getting a cab for him and then twenty minutes later would still be in discussion about some detail of their past week of work together, bickering about something stupid, or just lost in a relaxed silence for a moment looking out at the view of the city. The music had stopped playing when they were both standing right at the window for a minute so Barnaby could point out to him roughly where in the city the house had been where his family had lived when he was a kid. When Barnaby suddenly saw something on Kotetsu's shirt, he reached over quickly to swat at his sleeve, spilling a little bit of the wine left in the glass in his other hand in the process.  
  
"Uh—Bunny, what—?"  
  
"That bug!" Barnaby said, grinning a little in a way that was rare and kind of strange to see. "It was just on you."  
  
"Oh! Where'd it go now?" he said, looking down at the floor all around him.  
  
"I don't know, I can't..." Barnaby set his glass down on the ledge under the window and then clapped his hands to make the overhead lights automatically turn on, which just left them both squinting a bit hilariously for a few seconds as their eyes adjusted to the sudden brightness. He sighed when they still couldn't see anything. "This is impossible..."  
  
He grabbed Kotetsu's shoulders and spun him around to make sure the offending beetle wasn't still crawling on him anywhere, and then they both started an intense search around the entire half of the room. They both dropped down to the floor and crawled around looking over every inch of the floor, examining closely every part that was more shadowed, until they came face to face again both turning up behind the bigger chair and both rose to stand again with looks of confusion.  
  
"There are only so many places it can be in this barren room," Kotetsu said, looking around every side of one chair again. "Come on, Bunny, we can find the little fucker. This is what we do: clean up Sternbild, getting rid of one pest at a time...What's so funny?"  
  
Barnaby had a tight smirk on his face. "Nothing...You swear a lot more when you drink. I'm not used to it."  
  
He smiled back at him and said, "Here, grab that side to help me lift this."  
  
They lifted up the chair from the bedroom to take a thorough look underneath it. Barnaby checked the bottom of the table. They looked under their feet to see if they'd stepped on it. Then they finally had to look around them in a resigned way, both leaning against the extra chair.  
  
"What if that wasn't even the same one as before?" Kotetsu said just to make it even better.  
  
Barnaby widened his eyes a bit for an instant. "Ugh. Don't say that." He clapped his hands to make the lights go back out. "Whatever. It got away..."  
  
Kotetsu then looked down at the wet spot on the front of his shirt where Barnaby had spilled wine on him.  
  
"Oh, sorry about that," Barnaby said. "Let me..."  
  
He grabbed a small towel he'd used earlier and left draped over the arm of his chair. It seemed he was suddenly very close when he started dabbing it lightly at the faint stain on Kotetsu's shirt. He had his other hand on his chest as well, keeping the fabric smoothed out so he could see the whole stain. The music had stopped a while ago, and now they'd stopped talking too, and their breathing close together now sounded strangely loud.  
  
Then Barnaby's eyes looked up and met his softly for a moment. It was a very brief look, the smallest little smile, but Kotetsu was sure he saw it: something sort of timid and embarrassed in his face as he seemed to realize what he was doing. And then his eyes fell back down, his hands started drawing away...  
  
Kotetsu raised his hands up and held Barnaby's where they were, pressed lightly against him. He only had to effortlessly sway forward a few inches to kiss him. It was like a big bright green-eyed ditch just waiting there for him to fall right into without even thinking about it if he moved at all in that moment. A soft landing too, way too easy, way too sudden, Barnaby's lips molding against his slowly but without resistance for the first moment in a way that felt completely automatic. Just the single point of warmth and contact was already bringing a tingling of nerves all over him. He felt Barnaby finally breathing out slowly, and he did too, sighing, reaching a hand up to find his hair...  
  
Then he heard Barnaby's breath catch in a way that sounded alarmed, no longer relaxed at all, and Barnaby pulled back as quickly as it had started. Almost seeming to shake himself out of something, Barnaby blinked and stepped back a little. "Wh...What are you doing?" he asked faintly.  
  
Kotetsu could only wonder in the following moment of tense silence what kind of answer people actually expect in response to questions like that. After all, it was fairly obvious what he'd just been doing, he thought, but he still tried desperately for a few seconds to think of any possible explanation he could give as if that hadn't been a rhetorical question. Like something that didn't give away forever with no taking it back that he really wanted Barnaby, to kiss the hell out of Barnaby like they were about to die in a couple minutes, to make him come so hard that stick up his ass would fly right out never to return.  
  
Okay, maybe the situation was still somewhat salvageable, as he couldn't have given away quite that much in a kiss that had lasted about five seconds. Except he still hadn't said anything and Barnaby was opening his mouth again, looking down and away from his eyes.  
  
"I didn't know it was like that," he muttered with a somewhat sullen face.  
  
"It's not," Kotetsu replied quickly, not that he was sure what Barnaby was talking about. "It's not like anything! This doesn't mean anything, it was just...I wasn't thinking, okay?"  
  
He really didn't understand, but the reaction settling on Barnaby's face was even worse than he ever might have expected. There wasn't mere discomfort there more than anything, or a strongly negative kind of surprise, or even regret and despondency over this revelation. Any of those might have been in there somewhere at the moment, but most of all Barnaby had just started to look coldly withdrawn, like he was trying to pretend it all made less of a difference to him than it really did. It was worse than anything.  
  
"Hey, I'm  _sorry_ ," Kotetsu went on. "Really. It was stupid of me, it's not like I don't get it." He gave a nervous laugh and his next words kept coming out without thought as he tried to make light of it. "Even if you did like guys, it's not like you'd go for a totally lame old man who doesn't even know what Warsaw is or—"  
  
"What?" Now Barnaby was just starting to look annoyed, in a way that made him a little more recognizable again as his friend he'd been for the past half year now. "I—I  _do_  like—Oh, for  _God sakes._ " He shook his head like he didn't even know why he was trying to honor that with a response. "Never mind!"  
  
"Oh. _Oh._ " Kotetsu put his hands up in a yielding way. "Well, look, that's perfectly fine! No problem with that, I mean...Hey,  _I_  do now and then, so..."  
  
Barnaby rolled his eyes with a heavy sigh of exasperation. "Yeah, that would be pretty obvious now!"   
  
"Right. Uh..."  
  
"I think you'd better go."  
  
With that, Barnaby started picking up everything from the table and then went over by the window to get his glass. He didn't look at Kotetsu at all, even as he went a while without moving yet.  
  
When Barnaby started passing him on the way to go back to the kitchen, still not regarding him, Kotetsu said in a slightly pleading way, " _Bunny_..."  
  
Stiffening at hearing the name in a way Kotetsu definitely didn't like, Barnaby stopped where he was but didn't turn to face him. Kotetsu reached out, almost touching his arm to try to turn him his way or something, but then thought better of it and dropped his hand back away from him.  
  
"Okay," he said quietly in acceptance. Barnaby seemed to watch him just out of the corner of his eye as he went to pick up his jacket and then slip into his shoes, but Kotetsu didn't look at him again as he muttered a "Goodnight" before leaving.

 

 

He had barely been in the training center for an hour before Nathan somehow sniffed the whole thing out and soon found a good opportunity to corner him.  
  
"I told you not to do anything stupid," he said, making Kotetsu look up quickly in alarm while he was sitting down to have a break and drink something.  
  
The crazy thing was Kotetsu had pretty much forgotten all about it when he'd first woken up this morning, dismissing it as something else he'd just dreamed and letting it stay in the back of his mind. As he'd thought back on it more, the thing that was the real surprise to him at first was remembering how he and Barnaby had been acting kind of ridiculous together, crawling around on the floor trying to hunt down one stupid bug, which had seemed perfectly reasonable and of great importance at the time. It would have amused him a lot to remember if thinking about it hadn't automatically led him to remembering the rest of it the way it had really happened.  
  
Then he'd hoped when he saw Barnaby this morning, everything between them would just resume to the usual so they could both comfortably forget the whole thing, but Barnaby's very distant way of interacting with him today was only making the whole thing that much more real and impossible to forget. Though Barnaby generally seemed to be trying to go about his business without letting his feelings about this get in the way, he also didn't seem to care if anyone saw that something was wrong and definitely wasn't making any effort to pretend otherwise.  
  
That didn't mean Kotetsu couldn't still try. He guzzled down some juice, swallowed loudly, and wiped his mouth all with forced casualness, and said back to Nathan, "What are you talking about?"  
  
Nathan took a seat next to him on the bench, crossing his legs with a slightly impatient sigh. "I'm talking about how depressing and especially unapproachable Handsome is being today, even with you."  
  
"Didn't you know? He's just annoyed because he's going to have to call an exterminator about a problem with carpet beetles in his apartment."  
  
Nathan cringed, not having to ask what in the world he was talking about. " _Euw,_  you mean those dark-grayish ones that move kind of fast?" he said. "Those are getting to be a big problem here. I had to get rid of them in one of my shops."  
  
Kotetsu dared to hope for a second that he was actually off the hook and Nathan was going to leave it alone.  
  
Then he stared after him in shock when Nathan actually did stand up and start walking off.  
  
"Wait, for real?" Kotetsu said, stopping him for a moment. "That's it? You're actually going to _buy_  that and just leave it?"  
  
Nathan smiled sweetly. "Hell, I've got better things to do than  _force_  you to take any help from me," he said. "It would probably do you some good to learn to ask for it anyway."  
  
"Ah. Cute," Kotetsu said as Nathan blew him a kiss before turning away again. "Well, that's great! 'Cause I'm just fine without it, you know! H— _Hi."_  
  
The last was awkwardly blurted out to Ivan and Pao-Lin as they passed him staring; he had started calling after Nathan pretty loudly without realizing it, drawing their attention right to him. They both gave him a friendly wave and then went into curious-sounding whispers to each other as soon as their backs were to him.

 

 

2 DAYS LATER

When Kotetsu had gotten the call to action earlier, he'd been told it was a fairly low-key crime in progress and only half the group of Heroes were even getting called in. Then he and Barnaby had managed to nearly screw the whole thing up with their involvement, leaving Sky High to make the arrest that had almost been one of theirs, and just barely at that.  
  
Agnes had given the two of them some colorful warnings about how miserable she was going to make their lives if they didn't hold off on ripping each other's throats out over it until they'd gotten all the footage they needed, but their failure to cooperate together which was going to be witnessed by their viewership would probably give enough away on its own. They stayed in a tense silence until they'd gotten their armor removed, and then Kotetsu looked directly at him for what might have been the first time the whole evening.  
  
"You want to tell me what the hell that was?" he asked gruffly.  
  
"Why don't you explain what you thought  _you_  were doing?" Barnaby muttered as he started for the locker room to go change out of his undersuit. "I knew you'd started using your powers after me, and  _I_  had less than a minute left."  
  
Following him out of Saito's armory, Kotetsu replied, "And I still had time left by the time you'd gone ahead of me to save that girl! I  _told_  you I had her, if you'd listened you could have gone after the guy and he wouldn't have gotten that close to getting away!"  
  
"You only had _seconds_ left by the time I'd helped her! That was cutting it too close."  
  
"I was closer to her, and I wouldn't have said I could handle it if I didn't know I could! You just didn't want to listen to me!" Barnaby had walked far enough ahead of him that after he went through the sliding door into the locker room, Kotetsu had to hurry forward and throw his arm out to stop the door from sliding back shut on his face. "So what is this, you just want to  _punish_  me or something now?"  
  
Barnaby glanced back at him with an angered look. "How immature do you think I am?"  
  
"Oh, I don't know. Enough that you still sometimes have to take care of everything yourself, even if you're  _incapable_  of it, like when there's a bystander to get out of danger _and_  somebody to arrest at the same time. Do you realize how totally irrational that is? It's  _two versus one_. Simple-ass math. But you sometimes still obviously prefer the idea of being on your own."  
  
They were faced away from each other now as they both changed clothes, and as Kotetsu agitatedly stepped into his pants he could hear the restrained anger in Barnaby's cool voice.  
  
"Strangely enough, I've never screwed anything up for myself as you've done for me," he said.  
  
Kotetsu looked over his shoulder at him as he snapped back, "I think you know damn well  _I'm_  not always the problem."  
  
"Oh, please," Barnaby just said, shaking his head with annoyance.  
  
"Well, it's always  _something,_  isn't it?" Kotetsu went on, slamming his locker shut and then bending over to tie his shoes. "Oh—I wasted _three minutes_ of your life, oh  _no!_  Or—I don't know—made you look bad on a live show, or ruined your chances of interrogating that guy who was your first real lead on Ouroboros because you didn't  _tell_  me anything. Letting yourself rely on somebody isn't supposed to mean being even harder on them and treating them like a potential liability. You talk about trust and why I just won't cut it with the kind of mistakes I make, and it's all pretty damn rich when you're the one practically  _waiting_  to be let down."  
  
"I wonder why," Barnaby said, his voice thick with bitter sarcasm, as he headed eagerly for the door to leave the room.  
  
Hearing that somehow drained the anger out of him and just left him with his spirits trampled as he finished getting dressed. When he went out into the hall, he found Barnaby hadn't gotten far ahead of him yet because he'd stopped to look at his phone. Whatever he was reading on it wasn't seeming to make him any happier. When he put it away in his pocket and started walking the opposite way than he usually would to leave, Kotetsu followed him.  
  
"Where are you going?" he asked.  
  
Barnaby barely looked at him in the corner of his eye. "Mr. Maverick wishes to meet with me," he explained, no longer sounding quite angry, just as distant as he'd always been with him the past couple days.  
  
Of course. Mr. Maverick. Now  _there_  was someone who could probably offer him some more useful advice than Nathan had the specific insight for. Kotetsu had often wondered what the story was with him and Barnaby. All he knew was that Maverick had known Barnaby's parents somehow so the two of them went way back, and whatever their exact relationship was, it was clear Barnaby had the utmost respect for him and highly valued having his approval and guidance. He was going to have to write that guy an e-mail or something.  _Dear Mr. Maverick, many apologies for bothering you with such awkward and personal matters, but I can't help observing that you're one of the few elite individuals who Barnaby is easily able to recognize as someone he can trust completely. It would mean a lot to me and surely be very beneficial to the company image kept by our partnership if you'd just let me know what the secret is to getting in that club and staying there, besides just somehow managing to never, ever make any mistakes. Please don't say it's that._  
  
"Was there anything else?" Barnaby asked him after he'd kept following him a while.  
  
Kotetsu felt his mood sinking all over again. He had no idea how he could help it now, but he really didn't want to just leave things like this between them at the end of the day. "Look...I told you I'm sorry," he said softly. "And I really am. I don't know what else you want me to say."  
  
"...Whatever. I understand." The way it sounded, it might as well have been a dismissive "I get it." After a moment's pause he added in the same detached way, "You'd think I wouldn't be that surprised, anyway."  
  
Kotetsu didn't like the sound of that any more than the rest. "What does  _that_  mean?" When Barnaby still refused to look at him and didn't say more, he went on in frustration, "Oh, give me a break. Don't lump me in with your creepy objectifying fans who send you pairs of their underwear for you to sign."  
  
Barnaby shrugged, acting far too indifferent. "At least I know what to expect from them."  
  
Kotetsu remembered Nathan's words from a while ago— _"You're different, idiot"_ —and thought maybe he was finally starting to understand a little more. But it mostly just made him feel especially helpless to do anything about it, because he knew he couldn't talk his way around that one.  
  
"Come on, this doesn't make things any different from before," he said. "It's not  _like that,_  okay?"  
  
"Then what is it like, Kotetsu?" Barnaby finally slowed to a stop. He looked at him for a brief moment before asking, "How long...have you had that on your mind?"  
  
He sighed. "I don't...have it  _on my mind,_  jeez. It's not like I've been waiting for a chance to—"  
  
"You know what I mean," Barnaby interrupted impatiently.  
  
Kotetsu scratched his fingers through his hair at the back of his head in an intensely awkward hesitation. "I don't know. Hard to say, I mean...w-well...Which _part_  of it, specifically?"  
  
The fact that he had to ask something like that seemed to tell him enough. "So all the effort you put into this...partnership. Even when I was being...Was it all just because...?"  
  
Kotetsu felt his own mouth dropping open a little. "What? How could you...?" He shook his head, looking away in anger, and muttered, "Screw you for even asking me that."  
  
"Fine," Barnaby just said back quietly, and Kotetsu finally turned back around to leave in the other direction.  
  
Twenty minutes later, Kotetsu had driven all the way to a bar and found himself just sitting in his car in the parking lot, not quite wanting to step outside and go in. It felt too much like giving up. He didn't even get his keys out of the ignition before he realized there was somewhere else he could go and then started pulling his car back out of the space to turn around.


	4. Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood

One of Nathan’s shops where he could be found working any evening he was on call but unoccupied was an eccentric little boutique called Moon Age Daydream. Carrying the most outrageous get-ups and a small selection of music and posters, the place seemed to cater to a certain counterculture scene that Kotetsu was pretty sure Nathan was only about five years shy of being too old to associate with. For someone _his_  age, of course, going into the shop was like stepping onto another planet—one that must get a lot of flooding, judging by the heights of the platform shoes displayed in glittery rows in the windows.  
  
Needless to say, he had to be pretty desperate to be willing to go in here just to talk to Nathan. He'd only seen the place from the outside once when they were out together one night and Nathan needed to stop by to get some cash for bar tips. Just from the vague way Nathan had described it to him once, Kotetsu was pretty sure his other establishment Electric Eye would be a sight he wanted to avoid scarring himself with at all costs, and he definitely didn't want to bother Nathan to come meet him anywhere either, but if he was lucky he knew there was a chance he might catch him here.  
  
When he went in, the first employee he spotted was a girl with vivid sapphire hair who was dressing a mannequin in a corner. She wore a long jacket of wine-red velvet that was ruffled around the bottom and the ends of the sleeves, and the shiny star-shaped name badge on her lapel read DARLA. When Kotetsu approached her, she took one look at his shirt and tie and overall clean-cut appearance and then started to look a little nervous.  
  
“Uh, if you’re another debt collector, you should know Maurice quit two days ago,” she said.  
  
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw someone at the front counter drop right out of sight to hide, hitting the floor like he’d heard gunfire in place of those words. With an amused smile Kotetsu said, “Actually, I’m here to see Nathan. Is he around right now?”  
  
She raised an eyebrow like that was hard for her to believe. “Sure,” she said faintly in surprise, then just started grinning at him a little mockingly. “I think he’s in the back, just ask for him up front.”  
  
Smartass kid. Still he smiled as he started stepping away and said, “And come on, you better be more convincing than that the next time it isn’t a drill,” and then she smirked with some more agreeable amusement coming into her face.  
  
As he went up to the front, he looked around and allowed himself a brief moment to recover from the somewhat surreal nature of all this. In a weird way, he'd almost expected the girl to just say "Who's Nathan?" Sometimes it could be strange to be reminded that many of the other Heroes had entirely separate roles they kept up outside of their secret jobs and many acquaintances, actual  _friends_  even, who had no idea they were on TV and could do things like throw flames from their hands. It just wasn't something he habitually considered, probably because he didn't have much of a life outside of his job himself.  
  
He was pretty sure Barnaby was the only other Hero of the group of which this was true. It was all the more reason he hoped Nathan could possibly shed some helpful light on the situation. Not long ago he still wouldn't have been able to call him and Barnaby more than just partners with a lot of conviction, and all the unprofessional aspects of their relationship were still awkward and tentative sometimes for sure, but now he realized just how much he had invested in the mere potential and promise of it all. He could barely stand to face the possibility that he might be starting to lose him as a friend, without even quite understanding who or what was the most at fault here.  
  
Once he'd crossed to the other side of the store, for a moment Kotetsu thought he heard one of Blue Rose’s albums playing, but then he saw the music was coming from a small TV set up on a shelf behind the counter. It was a  _Hero TV_  rerun showing one of Karina’s recent performances, the Pepsi logo lit up behind her on the stage and silver confetti raining down on her. He wondered if this was the concert she’d had to give after going after those bastard robbers who knocked her down a flight of stairs in a museum a couple weeks ago. She’d smiled through all four songs, looking full of energy, as if she hadn’t been screaming while Barnaby had to set her dislocated shoulder just a while before.  
  
A young pale guy with a buzzed head was sitting at a stool by the checkout counter playing with his phone, and he seemed to have also just glimpsed what was playing. “I think you have the wrong channel, Nathan,” he said with a short laugh.  
  
“Oh?” The smooth voice came from an open doorway left of the guy, and then Nathan emerged from it to come out toward the counter. He looked as flamboyant as usual in a gold fishnet top that hung loosely off one shoulder and very shiny, very pink pants, but in here he didn't stand out as much as Kotetsu was used to. He looked over at the screen to double-check what his friend was referring to and then put his hands on his hips with a challenging look. “Say _again_?"  
  
“Why you got this lame corporate brainwash on the tube, man?” Buzz Cut said.  
  
Rolling his eyes, Nathan answered, “Because it’s a _free fucking world_ , baby. You can scoot your little punk ass out of here if it bothers you.  _I like the song_.” He picked up a remote from the counter to turn the volume up higher before turning to go back to whatever he’d been doing in the back room. Just then he noticed Kotetsu there with a quiet gasp and then immediately turned the sound back down. “ _Oh_  shit, red alert, this can't be good." He quickly waved a hand in the kid's direction. "Tommy, get lost, go get a job or something. My friend needs to sit there.”  
  
“Um, I’m good, actually,” Kotetsu said awkwardly.  
  
Not getting up from the seat, Tommy looked over his shoulder and pointed a thumb in his direction. “ _This_  dude?”  
  
“He likes this song, too,” Nathan answered as the only explanation as he came around the counter to approach Kotetsu.  
  
"Hey," Kotetsu said under his breath with a mild and sheepish smile. As Nathan took his arm and started pulling him toward the other end of the counter where they'd be more out of hearing range of everyone else, he glanced back at the television briefly and said a bit teasingly, "I can't believe you watch reruns at work."  
  
"Got to try to keep the kids well-rounded," Nathan explained with his eyebrows raised matter-of-factly.  
  
As they both leaned against the counter, Nathan looked over at Maurice and nodded his head to the side to signal him to take what he was doing a few feet further down to the other end and give them some space. He lifted a hand up to sympathetically brush at Kotetsu's arm a moment and said, "So?"  
  
The words started pouring out almost with a note of panic in them. "I don't know what to do," he said. "I need to get him back, Nathan, this is awful. It's worse than when we had to work together and we weren't friends. Now we're not friends  _anymore_."  
  
"Right,  _okay_ , honey. But I can't try to help you with this one unless you _tell me what happened_."  
  
Kotetsu sighed. He'd been afraid of that part. "Yeah. Right..." He bit his lip for second, fidgeting uneasily. "Well, I...might have sort of jumped him when we were having a drink at his place the other night."  
  
Nathan grimaced, though he didn't seem terribly surprised. "...Oh." He tilted his head a little, looking at him scrutinizingly. "And  _how_  much drinking was involved, exactly?"  
  
He hesitated again. "I don't know, by that point...I might have started sobering up, and he was..." As he kept thinking back on it, he only frowned more. "Well...he  _was_  smiling really differently, and...he said something about how I was swearing a lot and it was kind of funny."  
  
Nathan's expression immediately sunk; he knew what Kotetsu was like pretty drunk, and apparently that description sounded accurate. "Smooth, Tiger," he said with a sigh.  
  
"I  _know_ ," he groaned.  
  
Darla had just come up to the counter to grab a pen. Before walking back away, she looked over at the two of them a moment and said in a sweetly jibing way, "Hey Nathan, what's Mr. Tax Accountant doing around here anyway?"  
  
"Oh, as if I haven't noticed you staring at him a little in the time he's been here," he teased, then winked at her as she went away shaking her head but possibly also blushing a little.  
  
Kotetsu looked down at his own outfit, suddenly feeling almost self-consciously like  _he_  was standing out here. "Come on, I don't look  _that_  stuffy...?"  
  
"Hm..." With a small smile, Nathan reached for a revolving stand nearby on the counter that displayed a variety of small scarves hanging from hooks and started turning it like he was looking for something specific. "So go on."  
  
"Huh?"  
  
" _Details_ , Kotetsu. Tell me exactly how it went, what he's said about it, all that."  
  
Right. He said that like it could be so easily done...  
  
Nathan picked a scarf and held it up against Kotetsu like he was seeing how well the color went with his ensemble. He pursed his lips in consideration as he held it there, then looked up at him expectantly. "Kotetsu," he prodded.  
  
"Fine. Okay..."  
  
And through an incredibly uncomfortable explanation, he recounted everything from that night and the last few days that seemed the least bit important. During all this, Nathan kept picking up different scarves to see how the colors would look on him as if he wasn't even listening. At first it was distracting, but after a while Kotetsu realized he would actually feel a lot more ridiculous just saying all of this straight to his attentive face, and maybe that was the whole idea.  
  
In fact, he'd actually started rambling after a while, going back into that somewhat panicky tone as he said all his fears about what this might mean for their relationship, and at this point Nathan had to stop him. "Okay," he said in a steady voice, looking directly at him a moment. "So. I'm guessing he must have kissed you back, even if it was just for a second, right? At least a  _little_?"  
  
That was definitely not the first thing he would have expected him to ask. Kotetsu gaped at him in alarm for a moment, then actually started thinking about it. "I...Well, I  _thought_  so, actually, at the time. But obviously—"  
  
"Obviously even if he did—you know, for whatever reason—he isn't comfortable with the fact that he did," Nathan finished for him. He waved his hand dismissively as he added again, "For whatever reason."  
  
"Um. Right. But how would that seem so obvious to you? If—I mean— _if_  he did..."  
  
"Well look, the man is full of eccentricities I really can't pretend to understand, but it just sounds to  _me_  like what has him so upset isn't the way it happened as much as that it happened at all, the possible consequences and everything. Just seems like he's trying awfully hard to prove something." Nathan seemed to have finally found a scarf he liked for him, a neckerchief of a rusty gold color. He set it aside on the counter instead of hanging it back up with the others and then reached up to start pulling down the knot of Kotetu's tie.  
  
"But what does  _that_  mean?" He looked down at Nathan's hands working at removing his tie. "And what...are you doing?"   
  
Nathan didn't seem to hear either question. "Listen. Do I think he's overreacting a little? Sure. Maybe. But after all, he's used to you being pretty patient with him when he gets kind of irrational, isn't he?"  
  
"I guess...though I wasn't so understanding about it this time," he said grimly. "After we screwed up out there today I blew up at him over it, and it only made things worse."  
  
"Well, it's probably not a big deal that you called him out on it a little. But just keep in mind, he doesn't owe you anything. If he starts thinking you're going to keep pushing the issue now, I'm guessing he raises the wall for good this time and never lets you get close again. Before he can even cool down and think about forgiving you, he's probably just waiting to be sure you'll be able to let something like this go and this doesn't actually change everything. Even after what happened today, I'm really not sure it's as bad as you might think."  
  
Kotetsu raised an eyebrow skeptically. "What makes you so sure?"  
  
"Well, I noticed you've been calling him by his name now..."  
  
"Yeah," he said in a disheartened tone. "I got a definite impression he wants me to knock it off with the 'Bunny' thing now."  
  
"But is he still calling you by  _your_  name or not?"  
  
The question put him in a surprised silence for a while as Nathan started winding his now-removed tie around one hand to roll it up. "Actually...yeah, he hasn't stopped doing that, now that I think about it."  
  
"See?" Nathan smiled as he reached behind Kotetsu to stuff his tie into his back pocket. Incorrigible as ever, even during a serious conversation like this, he let his hand linger over his ass a moment longer than necessary as his smile turned a little playful, making Kotetsu brush his hand away with a grin and a roll of his eyes. Nathan cleared his throat delicately and continued, "If you ask me, you should just let him be while he's still angry and not try to force anything. In the meantime you can't really force good teamwork either, but I'm sure he realizes he botched it today no matter what he says and will hopefully try to keep his judgment more in check. Give him a while to be this way until he can be satisfied that he has the upper hand."  
  
"How could he possibly feel like he  _doesn't_  have the upper hand now?" Kotetsu asked in confusion. " _I'm_  the one who's still in the doghouse for making an embarrassing mistake of an advance that was firmly rejected."  
  
"But you're not the one who's always carefully guarded and got caught  _off_  guard after having a few. He's probably mostly just frustrated that a complication like this didn't happen on his own terms. Your relationship as partners is obviously still a strange and new and  _delicate_  thing for him, and even his disappointment at finding out you think of him that way maybe comes from a certain vulnerability he wasn't prepared to let you see and doesn't feel he should have to explain."  
  
He looked off in the distance thoughtfully for a moment while Nathan focused on unbuttoning his collar. "Oh."  
  
"Yeah." Nathan was now tying the scarf around his neck, but Kotetsu had stopped paying much attention to what his hands were doing a while ago and he only distantly noticed.  
  
"But you almost make it sound like you think he might actually...have something to hide."  
  
Nathan shook his head quickly. "I wouldn't think about that."  
  
"Why? I'm just trying to understand what you're talking about!"  
  
"Because it's not really fair, is it? You were drunk. And supposing  _yes_ , that that's possible, then he obviously wasn't ready for you to know that, was he? So however he might have reacted, even if he was positively  _swooning_  in your arms for one magnificent second, it didn't really happen, alright? Besides, it could easily not mean anything—God knows he's probably not getting much more action than you are if any, and especially given that, anyone who wouldn't otherwise can start to look yummy after enough wine. And in that case, why torture yourself thinking about the other possibility?"  
  
Kotetsu blinked, too overwhelmed to respond as he took that in and  _thought_  he understood but wasn't entirely sure. Then he finally looked down at what Nathan was doing again as he finished opening up the top of his shirt so that both corners of the collar were spread wide apart. He slid the scarf a little ways around his neck so that the knot lay more at one side.  
  
"There we go," he said with a grin of satisfaction, brushing his hands down the length of his vest to dust it off clean for good measure. "Oooh, screw tax accountant, now you look more...hip journalist."  
  
"If you say so," he said indifferently, already having to slide a finger underneath the somewhat uncomfortably tight scarf to scratch part of his neck.  
  
Nathan put his elbow on the counter and leaned his head to the side into his hand, looking at him closely and curiously. "Should I worry about you? Because now I think I'm going to."  
  
"Believe me,  _nothing_  like this is going to happen again."  
  
He shook with a low giggle. "That's not what I mean. What I'm asking is are you  _okay_  after this? I mean...are you in love with him, or what?"  
  
His eyes widened a little. "With  _Bunny?_  Oh n- _no_ , definitely...No..."  
  
Then in the following few seconds he actually thought about it, about the dreams and everything weird and bothersome that was in the dreams besides just sex, about how intensely frustrated he could get with the guy sometimes without completely understanding why as if it took nothing for him to get under his skin, about how he'd thought about kissing him desperately as if they were going to die in a couple minutes and how ridiculously dramatic that was, after all. And then he kind of hated Nathan right now for asking him that. It was all fine and manageable until he brought up the words.  
  
He looked down toward the floor as he started grimacing a little, and then he just held up his thumb and forefinger an inch apart, not saying it and not even looking at Nathan's face, but meaning,  _Maybe a little._  
  
Nathan sighed heavily and shook his head. "Oh my goodness, what am I supposed to do with all of you?"  
  
He was looking at something over Kotetsu's shoulder as he said it; Kotetsu turned for a second and followed his gaze to the television which was now showing Karina waving at the audience after finishing her last song.  
  
"What are you looking at Blue Rose for?" he asked. "Is  _she_  okay?"  
  
Nathan looked right back at him and answered nonchalantly, "No reason. She's fine."  
  
"Is some handsome little shit from her school making her cry or something?"  
  
" _No._ "  
  
"Because if that's it, I'll show the bastard. We should...do something really bad to him. Or just...intimidate him...real bad."  
  
Nathan sighed again. " _Please_  tell me you won't try to ask her about it." He added with a smirk, "Besides, even if it were something like that, don't you think Karina can take care of herself?"  
  
He shrugged and said dryly, "I don't know. Obviously  _I_  can't sometimes."  
  
"Well, there's nothing wrong with that, you know." Nathan was now speaking with a kind of wary delicacy. "You shouldn't think you have to keep it all inside."  
  
When Kotetsu looked at him tentatively, he found his eyes were lowered down toward the counter, momentarily fixed on Kotetsu's left hand—looking at his wedding ring, he realized. The ring he still hadn't taken off after nearly six years. Kotetsu didn't know what most of the others had assumed about it, if they'd ever noticed it, before they knew there had been a wife but that was a long time ago. A married man with no intention of hiding that he was married would surely mention a wife at some point, so maybe some of them figured it was just something he habitually wore as a more subtle part of his disguise. Or maybe that, for whatever reason, he wore it to keep people away.  
  
Maybe in some small way, that one was true.  
  
"I only meant thanks for your time," Kotetsu said, his voice coming out a little hard. "Don't push it."  
  
Seeing he'd been caught looking at it, Nathan now looked a little guilty. He reached up to give his shoulder a reassuring squeeze as a final gesture before Kotetsu moved away from the counter to leave.  
  
He stopped a few feet away to turn back and look at him for a final word. "You're a good man, Mr. Seymour," he said. "Thanks for the...thing. The scarf."  
  
Nathan winked. "Next time I'll have to—Boy,  _what_  are you doing?" he said, suddenly reaching out and grabbing an especially young customer before he passed by him. Kotetsu hadn't even noticed him getting any kind of a direct glance at the kid before he seized him by the arm, but now Nathan was pulling out a record he'd been hiding in his jacket. "Nice. Yeah, don't think I won't remember  _you_."  
  
The kid started protesting, "I was just going to—!"  
  
"Uh-huh. Get out of here before I start to  _really_  get mad..."  
  
With a low laugh, Kotetsu turned away to leave at last.

 

 

After he reached his floor in his apartment building later, he could have been knocked over with a feather when he turned a corner to see Barnaby waiting by his room.  
  
He was leaning back against the wall right beside the door with his arms crossed. When he saw Kotetsu approaching, his face seemed to convey an exasperated  _Finally._  
  
So he didn't really want to be here that much. But what  _could_  the reason be?  
  
"Um...Are you lost?" Kotetsu asked when he got to the door.  
  
"I need to speak to you," he said, and then explained with obvious irritation, "Your phone seems to be off."  
  
"Huh?" Kotetsu pulled it out of his pocket to find that he had, in fact, let it go dead at some point tonight. "Oh, sorry. How long have you been waiting here?"  
  
"I don't know, twenty minutes," Barnaby said while Kotetsu started unlocking the door. "I was about to give up and go. Where the hell were you this late anyway?"  
  
It was hardly  _that_  late at night, but he couldn't blame Barnaby for assuming so easily that he would be home. Except when they were working or somewhere together, he usually wasn't out on any given night past ten.  
  
He got the idea that Barnaby didn't truly care to hear what he'd been doing, though, so instead of even bothering to come up with an answer he just said another "Sorry." He opened the door and motioned an arm forward to invite Barnaby in before him. Barnaby looked almost reluctant to bother going in; clearly whatever he wanted to say, it was going to be brief.  
  
And he realized with a sinking feeling as he went in after him that that wasn't promising.  
  
After Kotetsu went to the center of the room and tossed his keys and wallet down on the coffee table, Barnaby followed him but not too closely, staying standing a few feet away from him and then crossing his arms again. "You were right about what happened today," he said.  
  
Kotetsu looked at him with some alarm.  
  
"I didn't realize it at the time, but I was letting something personal interfere with our jobs and acting unreasonable. I didn't have any sound reason to doubt you, so I don't really know what got into me."  
  
This sounded a lot better than the kind of conversation Kotetsu had been fearing this would be, but he still wasn't quite sure what this was. It sounded  _kind of_  like an apology, but it was hard to tell. "I...Okay," he just replied uncertainly.  
  
Barnaby hesitated a while before saying the rest. "You may be obnoxiously reckless about things like risking damage to property, and you get us into messes sometimes by not thinking ahead...but _I'm_  supposed to compensate for your weaknesses because I know them well, just like you do the same for me when I let myself get too angry or..." He sighed quietly. "Anyway, when it's a situation that  _requires_  fast action, you're usually nothing but reliable, so I shouldn't have felt any need to step in. I...really do value having you as a partner and couldn't have come so far in this career without us working together as well as we have, so...I just want you to know I don't intend to let anything get in the way of that again."  
  
The initial relief he'd felt at starting to hear all of this was starting to be mostly overtaken with frustration and confusion. The whole speech sounded strangely methodical and formal, like Barnaby was trying to sound genuinely apologetic because he really did want to get past this but his heart wasn't really in it. All the anger he'd expressed earlier this evening seemed to be gone, but there was still an obvious reluctance in the whole thing.  
  
"And...about the rest," Barnaby finally added, "well...I suppose it really shouldn't matter that much."  
  
Then it finally dawned on him as he remembered all the details of that former conversation, and his eyes narrowed. "Are you only here because Mr. Maverick convinced you to try to make up with me again?"  
  
Barnaby instantly frowned and looked away from him in a way that easily confirmed it. Kotetsu didn't realize that he'd said it with any kind of judgment in his tone until Barnaby's response was a little defensive. "Mr. Maverick has my best interests at heart," he said firmly. "And the talk I had with him made me see I was being ridiculous today. So what?"  
  
He knew he had no reason to doubt what Barnaby was saying, and surely Mr. Maverick _did_  only have good intentions, but this wasn't the first time he'd ever found himself thinking that the guy wasn't always spot-on about understanding what was probably best for Barnaby. Then again, it wasn't his fault he didn't know the whole story and how sensitive a situation this was. It was obviously left to Kotetsu to try to get the right message across.  
  
"Never mind all that," he muttered, starting to walk past Barnaby to go back to the door. "You obviously don't really want to be here. Just...go home, and I'll see you tomorrow."  
  
When he opened the door and waited for him to move, Barnaby just started looking a little angry.  
  
"Don't get the wrong idea, it's not like I'm expecting a better apology," he said. "You're not the one who has anything to apologize for."  
  
"Then don't throw me out of your apartment," Barnaby said.  
  
After an odd moment of indecision he shut the door again, and then Barnaby started to look calmer.  
  
"Look...I really wish you weren't so pissed at me," Kotetsu said. "And letting a thing like this affect our work is one thing...but you're entitled to feel that way when what I did was unwelcome. So I don't want you to say anything like that unless you're ready to and you really mean it, because..." He closed his eyes a moment, sighing dejectedly. "Well, I just don't want you to."  
  
In the following silence, the look in Barnaby's eyes started to soften until he started looking like he was just tired of all this. He let out a heavy breath, closing his eyes and rubbing at one of them under the lens of his glasses a moment, and then looked back up at him. "Alright. This can no longer be ignored: What in God's name are you wearing?"  
  
Kotetsu looked down at himself and then immediately felt a little embarrassed, having forgotten all about his slightly altered outfit. "Oh, this," he said, reaching up to take off the scarf. "Nathan felt like giving me a makeover, I don't know."  
  
"Really," Barnaby said flatly. "How'd you walk away with the beard still intact?"  
  
"What?" His fingers automatically raised to his chin. "What's wrong with my beard?"  
  
Barnaby's lips were a tight line of restrained amusement. "Nothing."  
  
He couldn't help but smile. The much less cold look in Barnaby's eyes now seemed to have already lifted a tremendous weight off his chest. When they fell into a silence for a while, it was a great deal less tense and uneasy than any of the silences they'd been sharing in the last few days.  
  
Kotetsu went near the middle of the room to stand closer to him, nervously running his fingers back through his hair. "Bunny...I know I could have done a better job of respecting you than...well...laying one on you while you were seeing double. But I hope that doesn't give you the idea that I don't. Respect you, I mean. In general. With the exception of this one time that I didn't see how I was failing to, just that once..."  
  
"I—I got it," Barnaby said, holding a hand up, like he was worried Kotetsu wasn't going to stop unless he said something.  
  
Kotetsu gave a small nod, and then after a moment he put his hands up with a little shrug. "It was a silly night, right?" he said, and Barnaby's face softened even more with a look of concession. "I guess I just misread something at some point. But...well." With another shrug he finished, "Now I know."   
  
At that, Barnaby's look turned a little somber and his eyes dropped down to avoid Kotetsu's gaze. After a long hesitation he said softly, "I don't want to be with anyone." He crossed his arms, looking uncomfortable as he shifted his feet a moment. "I just don't...I don't  _need_  that."  
  
This caught him off guard a little, and after a surprised silence the first thing that came out in response was "Okay. Good. Neither do I."  
  
Barnaby met his eyes again only to lower them back down, the look on his face still the same.  
  
Of course Kotetsu recognized how kind a rejection the words had been, so much more than Barnaby was in any way obligated to give him. At least he was going to choose to see it that way, because if Barnaby actually meant it, he knew it wasn't exactly any of his business to think about what it meant and how sad it sounded.  
  
Finally he swallowed uneasily and amended, "What I mean is...that's just fine."  
  
Barnaby looked at him again and nodded.  
  
After that, they both seemed to be left with the quiet realization that Barnaby was still in his apartment. For the first time. Barnaby had needed to drop by to bring Kotetsu something he'd left at his place once, but he'd never actually come in. Barnaby looked around, letting himself actually notice everything now, and his eyes stopped for a moment at the wall where most of Kotetsu's family pictures were displayed on the shelves. When he turned his face back in the other direction, something in the motion made it seem that he practically had to make himself look away.  
  
Then his attention was drawn to Kotetsu's video collection—specifically all the cases that had bright yellow spines, apparently, as the next thing he did was walk close enough to be able to read what they were. "Wow. You sure have a lot of Legend stuff."  
  
"Oh. Well, naturally," he said with a smirk. "He's  _Legend._ "  
  
"I take it you're a fan."  
  
"Well. There's kind of a story...I was at the right place at the right time, and you could say he made quite an impression on me. You would be a fan, too."  
  
"You mean you met him?" he asked with a cocked eyebrow.  
  
Kotetsu had to try not to frown in some disappointment. The experience wasn't something he mentioned lightly, but if he did share the story more often that was not the weak kind of reaction he would expect from everyone. Maybe it was a good thing he  _didn't_  go around telling everyone about it.  
  
"Yeah, back when I was twelve," he answered.  
  
"Huh. I admit I don't know the first thing about him."  
  
"What?!" In an instant he pointed to the couch.  _"Sit. Down."_  
  
Barnaby watched him head over to the shelf. "You're kidding, right?"  
  
"You can't be a Hero and not know anything about the first Hero!" he said as he looked over the titles. "Then you're just bound to embarrass yourself in an interview someday by showing your ignorance about your own profession."  
  
"Yeah...I don't think that's ever going to happen," Barnaby said, though he was already taking a seat on the couch with a resigned look.  
  
"Here we go," he said enthusiastically once he'd picked a disc and put it in. "This one's a collection of episodes from '57, when it wasn't in color yet, obviously, and the kind of budget the show had was still pretty crappy so sometimes they only had one or two cameras. It's  _gold._ "  
  
Barnaby shook his head with a small smile as he joined him on the couch. "You are such a  _dork_ , do you know that?"  
  
" _Shhh_ ," he said as it was starting, nudging him in the side.  
  
After being so unsure he'd ever even get to deal with Barnaby teasing him ever again, Kotetsu could hardly stop smiling the whole time they watched, so happy just to have both his favorite Heroes here.


	5. On a Losing Streak

 

 

 

NC 1964

It was the kind of day in early spring when the mild weather still feels so new and revitalizing, with nobody accustomed to it or taking it for granted yet. While Kotetsu was wearing short sleeves for the first time that year, the open air and the warmth of sunlight on his exposed skin was like the relief of some burden he'd forgotten he'd been carrying by now.  
  
He would remember everything about this day. The flowers that were starting to bloom there in the park near the Stern Bild University campus, the way Tomoe almost fell out of a swing while leaning far backwards in it so he could bend over and kiss her, exactly what she looked like then wearing a mint green sundress and yellow headband and with the outdoor light giving her dark eyes a certain sparkle. The dress was a thin and delicate fabric, and every time Kotetsu touched her he could imagine what the pleasant spring breeze felt like breathing right through the material onto her skin. Always mindful of things like grass stains on such light-colored clothes, she made a point of lying mostly on top of him while they relaxed on the ground in the shade of a tree, her long hair blowing over his face a little while they watched students and parents with little kids going by.  
  
At one point after Tomoe mentioned her roommate Bonnie, Kotetsu asked, "Has she stopped trying to guess what my power is?" He'd been told about how Bonnie was a very friendly girl to room with but almost invasively curious. When asked once about her boyfriend, Tomoe had mentioned that he aspired to be a Hero. Not feeling quite right giving away every detail so easily, she'd at first been vague about it so it wouldn't seem she meant to brag, but over time as she and Bonnie had become better friends it had simply turned into too much of an amusement to leave her wondering about it.  
  
"Well, she  _might_ have figured out that it must have something to do with how fast you're able to get here after I call you sometimes," she answered. "But of course I can only tell her she's kind of getting close, since speed isn't all there is to it."  
  
He laughed.  
  
"She was talking about it with our other friend there once and now I feel like everyone's going to make an embarrassingly big deal about meeting you when I finally get the chance to properly introduce you to all of them," she said a little wearily. "It's a relief that they all think it's pretty cool, though. Even with people here, you never know..."  
  
"Mm-hm." Kotetsu had closed his eyes for a while then, one of his arms put back under his head as a pillow.  
  
"A lot of the time it just turns into a conversation about what kind of powers _they'd_  like to have most," she said with a light laugh. "Of course Karl settled on hangover immunity right away."  
  
He laughed again, running a hand down her back to rest on her hip. "What kind would  _you_  want to have if it could be anything?"  
  
"Hmm..." He opened his eyes as she sat up a little, propping herself up with one elbow on the ground right by him. Then as they looked directly at each other, a soft and slow smile of realization came onto her face. "I'd want to have the same thing you do."  
  
Kotetsu's eyebrows raised a little. It struck him as such a strange thing to say, but still it seemed he could feel the idea settling in him as some warm, healing thing. "Really? But why?"  
  
She crossed her arms on his chest and then rested her chin over them. "I don't know, it would just seem right," she said. "Maybe then, even with all the trouble you used to have, you could feel kind of like you've never really been alone."  
  
The words rendered him silent at first. He just looked up toward the tree branches above with an uncertain smile and said sort of teasingly to alleviate the tone, "Well...that's a boring answer."  
  
Tomoe didn't laugh or nudge him annoyedly. She waited until he looked back at her and smiled at him in that way again. "It's the only answer," she said softly. And Kotetsu's grin melted away, along with some kind of barrier. He pulled her forward to kiss her, his hands holding both sides of her face, bright light burning behind the red of his closed eyelids whenever the tree branches swayed in the wind to let the sun through.

 

 

.

.

NC 1978

"It's starting to get cold, isn't it?" Barnaby's voice came softly from behind him as he came outside to join him on the terrace.  
  
Maybe Barnaby had usually been acting a lot happier with his life in the past year than he was when Kotetsu first met him, but he'd seemed to be in an especially lightened mood lately, and it was no wonder. He had just been named MVP after only his first year as a Hero, and now the banquet tonight was in honor of him breaking Legend's record. He had every reason to feel pretty good about himself, and maybe all this was helping him feel that life was finally being pretty good to him, too.  
  
It was one of the last times Kotetsu would see him so happy before nearly everything that had come to them in the past year got yanked out from under them.  
  
For a while they stayed alone together outside in the nighttime chill, looking out at the city lights, sharing their dreams and plans for the future as if there couldn't possibly be anything ominous around the corner. When he told Barnaby that his only aspiration was for his daughter to say he was cool, Barnaby seemed a little amused by how small a thing that was. But as they fell into a calm silence, staying outside a couple more minutes so Barnaby could avoid having to return to his big party and do the obligatory mingling just a bit longer, he realized just how much it was true. His only wishes really were that simple, even in a sense where his partnership with Barnaby was concerned.  
  
Though he still usually tried not to think about it, Kotetsu knew he still cared about Barnaby as more than just a partner or friend. In fact, ever since he'd become a lot more conscious about keeping them at bay, it seemed those feelings had only kept getting stronger. But he was as sure as ever right now, as the two of them found a certain momentary solace in each other's quiet company away from the crowd of fancy suits inside, that just this was enough. He could only wish that things would stay like this. Of course he was only human, and there was a part of him that wanted more from Barnaby, but he prayed this would always be enough and being denied all the rest would never make him too unhappy to appreciate it anymore.  
  
He only hoped Barnaby knew that much. He liked to think that he did, that their relationship had strengthened enough that Barnaby could see more easily now how much it meant to Kotetsu just to be able to be together like this, standing in such a comfortable and understanding silence. It seemed simple enough and kind of silly, just like the one thing he wanted from Kaede, but it felt like so much more than he'd had with anyone before they'd come into each other's lives. That didn't even make a lot of sense—they hadn't known each other nearly as long as it sometimes felt like they had now, after all, and Kotetsu couldn't explain why it always felt so natural and easy to be around him—but still he hoped Barnaby understood that. And that he was right in suspecting Barnaby felt the same way.  
  
"What are you thinking so hard about?" Barnaby asked, turning around to lean back against the rail.  
  
Looking to the side at him, Kotetsu smiled. "Just about how much things have changed," he answered.  
  
Barnaby returned the look fleetingly, his smile a small one but full of warmth and a silent agreement. "Come on," he said as he nodded his head toward the entrance inside.  
  
The unspoken request was obvious:  _Please don't leave me by myself with these people._  Kotetsu smiled again as he started following him in and took a quick glance around the hall. "If you're really running low on fake smiles for the evening, it looks like we could take refuge with our own kind over there," he observed, gesturing to a corner where most of the other Heroes had started accumulating into a group. Then he put a hand at Barnaby's elbow and turned close into him, talking directly into his ear with a smirk. "Watch out for Emblem, though. He's a cuddly drunk."  
  
"Heh," Barnaby laughed. "Why does it sound kind of like there's a memorable experience behind that insight?"  
  
When Barnaby then slowed to a stop to turn to him and found the reluctant admission written all over his face, his own expression immediately turned uncertain and awkward. "Oh," he said in a stiff voice, suddenly avoiding his eyes for some reason.  
  
"Oh no—Nothing  _happened,"_  Kotetsu said. He started laughing, and then as the absurdity of the idea and Barnaby's reaction settled in he couldn't seem to stop, dropping his forehead onto Barnaby's shoulder for a second.  
  
"What?" Barnaby now looked sort of embarrassed and obviously wasn't seeing as much humor in it.  
  
"Your  _face_  just then," he said, eyes still squinted in his laughter.  
  
"Shut up," Barnaby said with a roll of his eyes, and then his face took on the look it did when he was about to regain control of a conversation with some slightly mean wise-ass remark. " _You_ watch out for Blue Rose as well."  
  
He stopped laughing and asked in confusion, "Why?"  
  
Barnaby shrugged. "She can't drink, so she's her usual self."  
  
"Oh...Huh?"  
  
Barnaby was going to have to explain that one to him later, because just then someone Kotetsu couldn't remember by name but was pretty sure was some Apollon employee caught sight of them drifting by and instantly turned to Barnaby.  
  
"Ah, Mr. Brooks," he said, extending a hand. "Let me congratulate you as a professional associate  _and_  a big fan."  
  
Of course Barnaby was able to pluck his name right from his memory bank as he graciously shook the man's hand. "Thank you, Mr. Qureshi."  
  
"What an exciting time to be involved in the industry you've made it now!" he went on. "This accomplishment is sure to set the bar higher for the show."  
  
It was only then that Mr. Qureshi dropped Barnaby's hand after holding it just a little too long in a way that looked just a little too familiar. So he was one of  _those._  Kotetsu resisted the urge to roll his eyes.  
  
If Barnaby minded or had even noticed, he didn't show it. "Well, that's what we all want and is great to hear," he replied with his tone as friendly as ever. Then he spared just a second to glance to the side at Kotetsu with a small smile, and in return Kotetsu gave him a brief sympathetic look before inevitably having to separate himself from him by turning to go join their friends.  
  
Over the next twenty minutes, every time Kotetsu looked over at him Barnaby seemed to have gotten swamped with attention from someone new he couldn't pull free from. It wasn't long after he took one of the few seats over in the corner that he found himself with Nathan squished tight between him and Keith on the small couch not meant for more than two people. He had his arm draped around Kotetsu's shoulders as he sipped at his wine and only made matters worse by making gently mocking and hysterically funny remarks about what many people in the room were doing now so that Kotetsu kept laughing loud enough to draw people's attention to their loss of decorum. At one point when Barnaby looked over the shoulder of the woman he was now talking to and met eyes with Kotetsu across the room, he instantly looked like he was struggling to keep a straight face as he watched Nathan adoringly kissing him on the cheek with one hand sort of petting his hair. As Nathan grabbed a napkin right from Keith's hand and started wiping his own pink lipstick off Kotetsu's face, he flashed Barnaby a hopeless "You see what I'm talking about?" kind of look, and Barnaby immediately covered a hand over his mouth to cover up his amused grin.

 

 

.

.

HUNDRED POWER TIME LIMIT: 4 MIN. 6 SEC

As soon as he was back in Sternbild after visiting his family, Kotetsu got busy packing almost everything in his apartment because at least that much was going to be easy to do.  
  
He packed away the video he'd forced Barnaby to watch with him once, and then almost every other item in his Legend collection went into a box of things to get rid of. Even that felt almost easy now, insignificant compared to the rest he had left to deal with.

 

 

.

.

DECEMBER 7

_"Ouroboros is gone. She'll tell us that when she wakes up..."  
  
"It's starting to get cold..."  
  
"We are just a small faction. Ouroboros will never die..."_  
  
If he'd just kept his mouth shut and let it be, everything wouldn't have gotten so much worse now. He knew it was pointless and unreasonable to regret it because he'd been  _right_  and Barnaby had needed to know, but he still couldn't help feeling like it hadn't done Barnaby a lot of good. As much as Kriem's words had clearly troubled him and left him without any of the final answers he'd been hoping to get from her, Barnaby had still been certain enough that he remembered seeing Jake in his house that night twenty years ago. But something in his gut hadn't let Kotetsu be satisfied that Kriem had to have been lying, and he had to dig up some footage of Jake that would show whether he had the tattoo, he had to let them check and know for sure.  
  
And then somehow he hadn't exactly been surprised by what they found. He was a man who relied a lot on his instincts, but in a situation like this he wasn't sure that was what he'd call it. With everything else that had started going bad for him recently, maybe it had merely seemed like it would be just his luck for this thing not to stay dead.  
  
All this had him so deep in thought at the moment as he stared down into a mostly-drained glass of whiskey that he didn't see Antonio coming up beside him before he heard him.  
  
"I'll get him another of whatever he's drinking," he said to the bartender, gesturing toward Kotetsu as he took a seat right next to him. "And I'll have one, too." He pat Kotetsu heavily on the shoulder. "Hey, bud, what are you doing spooking around here all by yourself?"  
  
He gave a short, dry laugh and replied, "Look who's talking."  
  
"Point is  _I_ don't look so gloomy about it...I kinda expected you'd be with Barnaby tonight. I heard he took the day off because of personal stuff."  
  
"Yeah...I guess I'm sort of avoiding the next time I'll have to see Bunny," Kotetsu admitted.  
  
Antonio looked confused. "Why's that?"  
  
"I have to tell him something important. I've already put it off too long, and now with how things are going, I know he isn't going to take it well."  
  
They had been served their drinks now, and Antonio took a drink of his while he waited a while before saying his next words with a somber tone. "Nathan told me what happened. That Jake wasn't really his guy, or so Kriem said...That's got to be rough on him."  
  
Kotetsu idly stirred his ice around in his glass with the tip of his finger. "Yeah."  
  
"Does it have something to do with all that?"  
  
"No...That's exactly why it's been so hard to find a way to bring it up. Now that something else has come up, I'm not going to be able to help him with this like I should be doing. I don't know how I can possibly tell him that without it just seeming like I'm ditching him now that things are getting really bad and he needs me the most. But it has to be  _him_  first. It's bad enough for me to have to figure out how to break the news; if he somehow found out from somebody else, that would be a disaster..."  
  
Antonio nodded after taking all that in. "Hey, it can't be  _that_  bad, can it? You have to take some more time off soon to go help out Kaede with her powers, is that it?"  
  
Kotetsu didn't meet his eyes. He swallowed down some of his drink and then just answered, "Something like that."  
  
His friend kept staring his way for a moment, as if he thought maybe Kotetsu would cave in and give more away if he just looked at him long enough.  
  
Oddly enough, it seemed to work after a few seconds, though the truth that started coming out probably wasn't what Antonio was waiting for. "It's a really bad time," he said, his voice taking on a note of hopelessness and vague dread. "He's...I think he's in pretty bad shape over it. I've never seen him like this. He's been thinking about quitting because he doesn't even know if he can handle the job right now. He  _swore_  it was Jake, and now he says he keeps remembering it differently than before, and he doesn't know _what's_ going on. I know he feels kind of like he's losing it right now and I don't know what else to do for him. What the hell are you supposed to say to someone who's afraid he's losing his mind when his reasons for feeling that way honestly have you kind of scared, too?"  
  
Eyes widening with some bewilderment, Antonio took another long drink and then shook his head before finally answering. "I don't know...but if things are getting that bad, I know you must have good reason to have to prioritize something else for a while. Whatever's going on, I'm sure if you just  _explained_  it to him he would understand."  
  
He couldn't know how much harder that would be than he was making it sound, of course. When Kotetsu avoided his eyes again for a while, knowing he didn't look any more encouraged than before, he heard Antonio sigh.  
  
"You know...you're my best friend," he said. "The oldest one I got. I'd say we know each other pretty damn well. And still sometimes...I feel like I just don't get you, man."  
  
Kotetsu looked up, his eyebrows drawing together in an unspoken question.  
  
Shaking his head, he went on, "Like I say, you and I go pretty far back. But how often do we even have a serious and real conversation like this?"  
  
Kotetsu lifted his shoulders in the slightest shrug. "Well, that seems to suit you as well as it suits me."  
  
"And you're so sure about that  _why_?"  
  
He couldn't pretend not to be a little caught off guard by the question. "I don't know. For instance, after everything fell apart with you and...and, uh... _Dammit_ , I know her name. Tanya, or something? You know, _that_ whole thing. Back when you broke up, you made it pretty clear you didn't want to talk about it."  
  
"You're fucking kidding me. You mean  _Talia_? That was almost eight years ago, Tiger."  
  
"Okay, whatever! What's the difference?"  
  
"I was an idiot back then, that's the difference. So were you a bit."  
  
"Still are a bit."  
  
"You said it, I didn't."  
  
"I was talking about _you._ "  
  
"Like it or not we're  _not_  talking about me right now, and I'm gonna _finish_  what I'm trying to say about the subject." He pointed emphatically at him, jabbing his finger into his shoulder, in case Kotetsu was still unclear on what that subject was. " _Damn_ , man, you've got me almost losing my train of thought here! Look, I know it's not like you and I are good with the touchy-feely shit, but I'd like to think I don't always totally fail people when it comes to that kind of thing. Hell, I seem to remember a pretty heavy conversation we had that time after school at Marianne's once, and you said years later that what I had to say then may not have sounded all that profound but turned out to be exactly what you needed to hear at the time in order to start getting your shit together and just be with her already. So I'd imagine you don't regret  _that_  one."  
  
Softening a little, Kotetsu allowed himself the smallest bittersweet smile at the memory.  
  
"But still...you usually have a way of making it known that you only want me in your business to a certain point, and maybe we've gotten a little too comfortable staying that way. Then of course there's your daughter. You have this great kid and it's obvious you miss her all the time, but then that's it. You just _go on_  missing her all the time...And now you've got Barnaby."  
  
Kotetsu felt one of his eyebrows twitch. He waited in a stiff silence while Antonio took another drink in preparation for the rest.  
  
"I mean, he's the perfect partner for you, right?" he said, not exactly being sarcastic but still with something biting in the words. "Because you don't mind that he can be kind of a self-absorbed little prick who's used to having way too much on his own plate to deal with alone. In fact, I think you're real comfortable with him that way, because it makes it easy to keep him out of your business, too."  
  
Kotetsu was now frowning deeply at the counter. "So what was the part you  _don't_  think you get?"  
  
"It's just that I don't know anybody who deserves to be happy more than you. You go out of your way to help and support the people around you, but then you never take anything back. A guy can't just live that way. And whatever it is you think you'll be bothering Barnaby too much with by telling him about it while he has his own problems to deal with too, well, it's not fair to let him get the wrong impression instead, is it? If he's such a mess right now,  _he_ doesn't have the same option you have of playing it cool, now how fucked is that?"  
  
"And how's it going to be so much better to let him know if I'm kind of a mess, too?" It was not a loud outburst, just a string of tense and slightly bitter words, but for him maybe it was a lot to let out. "I'm trying to  _manage_  my own problems so I can carry the load for now. It's no good for _both_  of us to be..."  
  
"You don't have to be a damn savior all the time, Kotetsu." Antonio's voice had become very hard and serious, like he was giving this everything to try to drive the point home. "He's not fooled anyway, he knows it's bull. Everybody knows you're just human. If you're always pretending with him, how's he even supposed to be able to tell that you're for real? How are any of your gestures in the name of your so-called friendship supposed to mean anything that way? I just think that's kind of screwed up, that's all."  
  
Letting all that settle in sourly, Kotetsu finished off his drink with his face still firmly pointed down. "Thanks for the drink," he muttered wearily as he got up to leave.  
  
A chime from his phone stopped him before he had completely crossed the bar to the door. It was a text message from Barnaby:  _How long would you boil frozen broccoli? I think the package is wrong._  
  
Oh. This was bad. This was worse than he had thought.  
  
First of all, it was well past midnight now, so if Barnaby was trying to contact him about something so stupid at this hour then he must not even have had much of a sense of how late it was, which was exactly the kind of absent-mindedness Barnaby could be fussily unforgiving of in other people, never prone to himself. Also, as ironic and against his fundamental nature as it seemed, Barnaby was  _not_  a self-reliant creature when it came to basic needs like the cleaning of his home or feeding himself, and Kotetsu knew if it wasn't convenient to go out then he was usually much more likely to skip a meal altogether than take the time to prepare something for himself. For Barnaby, even if it was certainly better than not eating at all, being driven to the sparse contents of his freezer probably indicated both a desperation to stay inside and an utter detachment from and disinterest in everything.  
  
Worst of all, it seemed there was no way what Barnaby really wanted was a second opinion about the way to cook some vegetables. As if he didn't know Kotetsu would probably be the last person to ask.  
  
He just typed back,  _Coming over there. Is that alright?_  
  
Barnaby's reply came by the time he'd gone back toward the bar:  _Fine._  
  
Antonio's attention had been drawn to one of the TV screens and he didn't notice Kotetsu back at his side until he asked him, "You have your car here, right? Could you give me a lift somewhere?"  
  
He shrugged and answered, "Sure. Looks like I better take off soon anyway." He gestured toward the screen where a scrolling marquee was warning about the worsening weather. "Says the streets are getting bad to drive on."

 

 

A while after Kotetsu got to Barnaby's apartment, the view of the city out his window started to emerge from the blinding wall of white as the wind calmed enough to allow more visibility through all the snow. It kept drifting down thickly, covering the smooth glass surfaces of all the skyscrapers with an icy sparkle and giving all the flashing advertisements and other lights all around the cityscape a more faint and gentle glow behind the covering veil of bright dust. Kotetsu thought Sternbild was a beautiful sight in the winter, but he knew Barnaby had no appreciation for it now. Even when he wasn't in such a troubled mood, this time of year surely only held bad memories for him. For it to be coming back to haunt him all over again now of all times, so close to the day it had happened, seemed like some sick joke fate had to be playing on him.  
  
Kotetsu had come in to find him sitting down with a glass of wine which he was still nursing half-heartedly in hopes that it might make him get sleepier. Both of them would usually be starting to get tired at this hour any night, but the deep circles under his eyes told Kotetsu he was probably still suffering from very little sleep the night before.  
  
"So did you even eat anything?" he asked after neither of them had spoken for a moment, attempting a somewhat light-hearted tone.  
  
"Oh. No." Barnaby sighed. "When I couldn't get to sleep, I thought I might as well get up and make something, but I saw that broccoli I had was expired anyway, so...If I'd realized how late it was, I wouldn't have let you come all the way over here."  
  
"Don't worry about it," he said, shaking his head. "It was the first I'd heard from you since last night, so I wanted to come check on you."  
  
"Well. I'm okay. Just can't sleep right now..."  
  
His voice sounded so hollow. The words were obviously untrue, but he wasn't fully making the effort to put on an act. It was ordinarily such a natural skill for him, but right now it seemed he was beyond being able to do that.  
  
"Anyway...there's nothing you can do," he finished.  
  
They were words Kotetsu couldn't accept but was still starting to fear might be true. He was taking care to hide it, but inside he kept feeling pretty helpless to do anything for Barnaby. He'd seen him go through some pretty intense things before, nothing quite like this but similar enough for this to feel familiar in a way that was giving Kotetsu some growing dread that the last year had only been a long break from this nightmare that was supposed to be over. But he hadn't known Barnaby as well back then, and it was making him potently aware now in a new and not-so-gratifying way of how much things had changed between them. It was so much worse to have to see Barnaby this way now that he meant a lot more to him and he'd learned to appreciate the difference between when Barnaby was happy and when he wasn't.  
  
Kotetsu was looking back out the window for a moment when he swayed on his feet for a second, realizing all at once how exhausted he was. It was probably getting close to 1:30 now.  
  
"Sorry if I made you think..." Barnaby's voice trailed off into silence like he wasn't even sure what he meant to say. He stood up from his chair as he finally found words again. "I'm sorry you didn't need to come over here. Especially while it's like this outside...You could just stay here if that's easier."  
  
Kotetsu's face probably didn't hide his slight astonishment. "But...haven't you only got your bed?"  
  
Barnaby shrugged with the tiniest movement of his shoulders. "It's big enough for two if it  _has_  to be. I mean...I don't really mind if you don't."  
  
He looked at him closely, which was practically useless because Barnaby just turned mostly away. Kotetsu certainly didn't like how numb he still sounded while suggesting it, like he just couldn't care. But maybe it would make Barnaby feel a little better not to be alone and he just had no other way of saying he wanted him here. The more Kotetsu considered it, the harder it was to actually think about the time it would still take to get home to his apartment all the way down on the bottom level of the city. And he didn't want to leave Barnaby alone like this for another day, so if he did leave the first thing he would probably be doing in the morning was coming right back over here anyway.  
  
"If you're sure that's okay," he said, starting to follow after Barnaby headed back to his room. "After all, I kick sometimes."  
  
As Barnaby stopped at a small closet in the hall to get a spare pillow for him, there was no dry remark in response to that like he usually would have given. He just looked at him very briefly before opening the door, showing the faintest and weakest smile.  
  
The bed  _was_  a pretty large one for such a small room where just one person usually slept. As soon as Kotetsu had followed him in, Barnaby lay down on his back over all the sheets. While Kotetsu shed off his vest, tie, belt, and shoes, Barnaby just stayed still with his eyes open and fixed on the ceiling, looking kind of like he still didn't even expect to be able to get to sleep soon. After Kotetsu took a place on the other side of the bed, also spreading himself over the covers instead of getting under any of them, Barnaby reached over to his bedside table and switched off the lamp. Eventually Kotetsu heard him shifting position beside him and then his breathing seemed to get calmer, and it was the last thing he was aware of before slipping into heavy sleep.

 

 

When Kotetsu opened his eyes in the morning, both of them had moved.  
  
A golden head was tucked right under his chin, warm breath landing on Kotetsu's skin where the collar of his shirt was opened up, and Kotetsu had an arm partially draped over Barnaby with his hand idly fallen on his waist.  
  
At first he wasn't sure what to do, too cautious to even move out of worry of waking him up. And then he looked more closely at Barnaby and it seemed he couldn't just yet.  
  
Barnaby looked so different without his glasses on, so much more vulnerable, and with his eyes shut in sleep like this with some locks of hair fallen over them he made a sight that Kotetsu somehow felt kind of like he wasn't supposed to be spying on, as if he hadn't been invited to sleep here. It had to be Kotetsu's mind playing tricks on him, but he even seemed thinner now than he was supposed to look.  
  
So what else was he supposed to feel in a moment like this than this creeping, foreboding fear of how completely screwed he was? Because he was, and right now knew it so undeniably. He could feel that dangerous ditch opening up in front of him all over again, ready for him to fall into if he didn't watch himself carefully, only it wouldn't be a soft landing anymore. There were sharp edges on the way down, and no climbing back out of it this time. Maybe Antonio had been right about the point he'd been trying to make last night, because now for the first time he could clearly imagine where this would probably go if he didn't have to leave Barnaby. He could see himself getting too comfortable with the way things were between them, even if he only kept wanting him more and it slowly killed him inside, because he knew in a way it would still be easier to handle than if Barnaby wanted him too, just like being away from Kaede killed him but was still easier than actually being a father.  
  
And Tomoe. The endless cycle of guilt and irresolution that Tomoe meant to him now, the purpose he had left in his obligation to her, that was sometimes just a safe thing as well. Living without her the only way he'd managed to learn to and still holding onto her with this ring on his finger, even that was easy compared to even touching the idea of trying to actually move on and start over. Because what he willingly forgot so often now was that struggle is a part of it, that it had never been perfect, and sometimes loving her while she was still alive had been hard, too.  
  
Leaving her side that last time had felt almost impossible, but even that had maybe been an unjust mercy on him. He had tortured himself thinking about it at times, how painful it could have been in a whole different way to be there in the very moment the life went out of her. Having to see Barnaby this way now was almost kind of like how he imagined it. The more he watched him going through this, the more it felt like the life was getting drained out of him from staying so close, putting so much into this when it was going to end with him alone no matter what. It was falling in slow motion without feeling the drop in his stomach, only the helplessness of being thrown adrift with nothing permanent to grab, nothing to be done. Eight months he remembered the doctor telling them, and then suddenly it was three she had left if they were fortunate, everything sucking away into whatever it is that has to so cruelly feed on time.  
  
And he wasn't ready to go through it again but it was coming, the time the glowing aura around him would fade into dark and the timer would say he's supposed to have over four minutes left. There was nothing he could do to stop that moment from coming. He knew he would come to feel better about starting a different life once it meant he could finally be there for Kaede, and the change wouldn't have to mean completely  _losing_  Barnaby, not really. Like his brother had said, this didn't mean his life was over. But to a part of him, all of that was just words and desperate hopes. It still felt like the end. Not of his life, but still of something so great and so much a part of who he was that he couldn't begin to imagine how he was going to move forward from it. No matter what Antonio said, how could he possibly be honest with Barnaby about  _that_  without giving him too much to worry about now?  
  
Kotetsu turned over onto his back, suddenly needing to look away from him. He had to,  _had_ to get up today and deal with this, but at the moment he felt like he couldn't, not any of it...  
  
"Mm..." Barnaby was stirring, his eyes opening in time to see how close together they still were just before Kotetsu completely let go of him.  
  
Fuck. And he was crying a little now, he realized. Wiping quickly at his eyes with his face turned almost completely away, he said quickly, "Crap, I... _Sorry_ , Bunny."  
  
"Oh..." Looking behind him, Barnaby saw how far he'd strayed from his side of the bed, and then he started pulling back from him.  
  
Kotetsu sat up and went on, "I was..."  
  
"Don't worry about it," Barnaby muttered, turning onto his back. "I know you didn't mean to." His eyes fell back shut and he added in a still weak and tired voice, "Use the shower if you want."  
  
He nodded even though Barnaby couldn't see it, a gesture to assure himself. Right. Shower. That was the thing to do now. He'd start there.   
  
Afterwards, he went out for a while to go down to the nearest grocery store and pick up all the needed ingredients for the kind of fried rice he knew how to make. He didn't know if Barnaby would be ready to hear something like the news that he was quitting anytime soon today, but Kotetsu was going to stay around as long as it took to help him through this. In the meantime, he could at least get Barnaby to finally eat something.

 

 

.

.

HUNDRED POWER TIME LIMIT: 3 MIN. 57 SEC.

He couldn't go through this again.  
  
After he found out Barnaby was missing, it was all he kept thinking during every silent moment, a thought he kept forcing away. Stop it, that's  _not_  a possibility here, he told himself. But then he kept thinking about how badly Barnaby was doing and the kind of things he'd been saying that disastrous last time they saw each other— _"I'm going to be tormented by the past for the rest of my life"_ —and he couldn't help but still fear that something horrible had happened.  
  
The very distinct kind of pain that he'd carried through those first days and first months and then first couple years living without her had not been the kind of thing that seemed to heal. It merely become more bearable and manageable as it was adjusted to, an inevitable acceptance of what little was left and what could never be found again. During that time he had often thought about that nice spring day they'd spent together around her college campus once and the words she had said then that had always stuck with him,  _"Maybe then you could feel kind of like you've never been alone,"_  and he'd wished that he had told her at the time what he'd known but been unable to articulate even to himself. That she already did make him feel that way. There had been a long time when he'd had little hope of ever having a life as good as she would make his because he wasn't normal, but when he had been with her she'd had a way of making it seem that all of that not only was over but didn't matter anymore.  
  
He had never told her that, not in so many words, and then one day she was gone and he was left with the most profound loneliness like he could never describe. It was a hollowness inside as well as outside, as if there was so much less of the world than there had been before, just unstable left-over fragments of the wreckage barely supporting his weight with every forced step he took forward without his heart in it. He still had his daughter and he had his job, but there was no central heart connecting it all as a system anymore, nothing holding all the pieces of his life together the right way they were supposed to go, because he hadn't been the one to make it possible in the first place. He had never been any good on his own.  
  
So after six years he had learned to live familiarly with the fact that he was now left alone and always would be. And then one day when Albert Maverick was introducing a new Hero to their viewers, he said this man had the same power as Wild Tiger, and right at first Kotetsu just thought in a senseless knee-jerk reaction of disbelief,  _No. Impossible._  He was hearing it, but it couldn't be. Nobody could have been through what he had been through. There couldn't be another soul in the world who shared _that_ with him.  
  
All this was what Kotetsu remembered distantly in the moment that he finally saw Barnaby again, feeling like it had been so many more days than it really had been since that terrible argument, when Barnaby came to face him and Kotetsu saw for himself now that he had no memory of who he was. It was what he remembered as he prepared himself to fight Barnaby if he had to and make him remember,  _make_ him, or try until he lost, and it suddenly registered with a bitter acceptance that if this didn't end well he was going to die alone like she did.  
  
Because it felt like he  _was_  alone now, like this could be the end of nearly everything all over again. The others had all recovered their memories and finally knew him again, but it was Barnaby he most needed to snap out of it, to be Bunny again. In a way this was even worse than the other loss, because if he never remembered it would be as if all the time they'd known each other had never even happened at all. Barnaby would go back to having that cold look in his eyes that he'd had when they first met and he would never know. He would never know anything.  
  
His determination hardened with the last of these crippling worries he could allow himself to be distracted by, and then he said quietly to Antonio, "Take care of Kaede if anything happens to me."


	6. Rabbit's Foot

 

.

GOOD LUCK MODE

It was supposed to mean they both had seconds left, hearing that stupid voice counting down _three, two..._  
  
But their powers were never going to start and stop working simultaneously again, and the activation of that feature on both their suits seemed to hold some bitter irony now as they both landed their attacks, in sync but charging at  _each other_  this time. That combined strength had been enough to shatter a layer of diamond armor once, and it was only right before the collision that Kotetsu realized he didn't even know how dangerous this might be, that last thought flying through his head just before they charged together with a horrible and deafening crush as of two cars speeding right into each other.  
  
Barnaby had swung his leg up to catch him right in one side of his chest, the same side he had turned forward to land a punch with his right hand, so that both of them were directing all their strength to roughly the same point of contact and their blows met each other practically directly. The force of the impact sent them both immediately recoiling away from each other before landing in heavy, spinning crashes on the hard surface of the bridge.  
  
The impact had also just shattered part of Kotetsu's armor along with almost the entire right side of the torso. Inside his helmet, red warnings were flashing at his face informing him of system malfunction. With disgruntlement he reached up and just tore the thing off his head, then threw it aside and looked down at the damage. All the pieces that had covered his right arm and shoulder all the way up to his neck were completely demolished and had fallen away, along with a big chunk off his chest and the plate that used to cover his thigh. Almost nothing was securely attached to him anymore. Their suits were easy to move in because the separate parts weren't designed to hold together too stubbornly, so with so much of his damaged Kotetsu was essentially left with some remaining limbs with no connecting nervous system instead of some still-useful remnants of an exoskeleton...or something like that. It was something Saito had once explained could happen which was one of the only significant shortcomings of his design.  
  
When he looked over at Barnaby, he saw the damage to his suit had been even worse and he'd also already taken off his helmet. Both of them were left to throw off most parts of their armor that were now just cumbersome. While Barnaby did this with a determined silence where he'd fallen on the road about ten feet away, Kotetsu called over, "You alright? Did that calm you down yet?"  
  
In response to this, Barnaby's movements only seemed to take on more of an impatient fervor. He didn't seem to be injured, though, which was a relief.  
  
"Doesn't it bother you?" Kotetsu then asked.  
  
"What?" Barnaby said, his tone vicious and cold.  
  
"That thing in your life that doesn't make any sense."  
  
Barnaby rose to his feet and approached him by a few feet. "What's that supposed to mean? Stop talking like you know me."  
  
Kotetsu didn't rise from where he was. "I know why you're going so crazy with anger right now. It's not just that you've lost someone again, it's that it seems so senseless and without reason again. Another murder without motive. It's like no matter what you keep suffering and you don't understand the reason. Come on, doesn't it feel kind of like you're missing something right in front of your face? Like the pieces don't fit right?"  
  
"Shut up!" Barnaby snapped.  
  
He sighed. "I guess it's only typical you wouldn't really be in touch with your instincts about anything..."  
  
"Enough already! Get  _up_!" Barnaby shouted, crossing the rest of the distance toward him.  
  
"...No." He shook his head, suddenly realizing he couldn't do it. "I'm not going to fight you anymore."  
  
Barnaby bent over and grabbed him by the front of his suit to shake him vigorously. "What kind of a coward are you?! You  _bastard_!"  
  
They both blinked when a sudden bright light shone from overhead; they both looked up and saw an Apollon Media helicopter hovering far above. It gave Kotetsu a small, sudden hope to see that they seemed to be getting filmed.  
  
Then while Barnaby was still looking up at this, Kotetsu's powers ran out. He looked down at his own returned-to-normal form with his eyes going a little wide with dread.  
  
Then Barnaby's eyes were fixed furiously on him as he shook him again. "Just tell me why!" he demanded. "For what evil and senseless reason could you do that to a helpless old woman?!"  
  
"I'm telling you, I  _didn't_ ," he yelled as he finally got to his feet. "The others were trying to tell you this, too! God, you're hopeless when you get like this! You get on my case for not thinking things through, but then when you get really emotional the mistakes  _you_  make are even worse!"  
  
Finally driven past his limit, Barnaby threw a fist right into his gut. He was moderating the amount of strength he used, at least, so that he didn't even hit him much harder than he could have without use of his powers, but it was hard enough. Leaning over and clutching at his stomach, he went on through his heaving breaths, "If that other guy is Wild Tiger...whoever the hell he is...why isn't he here stopping you from doing anything stupid? Isn't that what your partner's supposed to do?"  
  
Then came the first kick to his legs, knocking him right onto the ground. Barnaby grabbed onto his arm to raise him back up enough to punch him across his face, throwing him to the side so quickly he barely caught himself with his hands before falling all the way over. Breathing heavily through the dizzying pain, he stayed like that leaning over and staring down at the pavement, and then spat out blood and wiped at his mouth with his arm before looking back up at him. "Okay...It's okay." His head sunk down miserably and he could hear the hopeless emptiness in his own voice. "Just arrest me if you have to. I'm sorry. I just want you to know this wasn't your fault. Whatever happens now, if you figure all of this out later, _please_ don't think that..."  
  
When he looked back up, he could see Barnaby wasn't even hearing him. There was nothing in his eyes but blinding white-hot rage. Barnaby grabbed him around the neck and started lifting him effortlessly, practically shaking all over in his anger. Kotetsu started choking and struggling as he was lifted up onto the tips of his feet.  
  
Barnaby spoke in a low grind of words. "I  _swear_  I will...Just  _tell me why you're doing this_!"  
  
Suddenly Agnes' voice, severe and serious, came faintly over a speaker, and Kotetsu realized it was coming from the communicator still functioning in Barnaby's helmet.  _"Barnaby_! This is being filmed and now going out  _live,_  do you understand? We're getting audio from the device in your suit. Now get a damn grip and arrest the fugitive already!"  
  
As he heard the last of this, Kotetsu's eyes started falling shut as he got close to blacking out. Then before he knew it, he'd been dropped back onto his feet and was falling to the ground gasping. Barnaby's expression was now filling with the heaviest despair, as if he felt he'd just been denied the one pitiful last thing he had left. At some point in the last half-minute his Hundred Power had reached its time limit without Kotetsu being able to notice.  
  
He was still catching his breath in frantic gasps with his hand around his sore neck when everything abruptly got turned over.  
  
He heard Barnaby give a shocked gasp and looked up to see him leaning over with his hand pressed over his forehead and his eyes closed in a pained look.  
  
"Bunny?" he said, hearing the note of fear in his own voice. He had seen Barnaby like this before—the last time he'd seen him before now, in fact. Was it happening to him  _again_?  
  
Barnaby finally lowered his hand from his face and looked up, looking incredibly lost and disoriented, and then his eyes focused on Kotetsu with a slowly registering look of horror. He backed away from him a little and then sank right to the ground, his feet giving out in his shock, and then it came as a faint gasp. "Kotetsu..."  
  
His breath poured out in a heavy sigh, and he allowed himself to just cave in on himself completely for a moment in his relief, leaning his head over on one knee with his eyes closed.  
  
"No," Barnaby moaned, and Kotetsu looked up to see him shaking his head, his eyes wild. "What was I  _doing_? Kotetsu!"  
  
Kotetsu didn't even have a chance to respond to that before Barnaby started clutching at his head again. Something was still happening to him. Kotetsu crawled over to him and grabbed his shoulders. "Bunny! What is it?"  
  
"I remember...Mr. Maverick! It was  _him_!"  
  
"I know," he said softly, squeezing his shoulders. "I know he's the one behind this."  
  
"No, it's not just this! It wasn't just Aunt Samantha, he—" The way he looked as he had to say all of it was terrible. He was splitting open with pain right before his eyes, talking almost hysterically. "My parents! I remember it now,  _he_ did it!"  
  
Kotetsu felt his own mouth drop open. It was something he probably should have been able to put together by now, but it was just too terrible to imagine, showing a level of evil in Maverick he never could have automatically assumed anyone was capable of. In some ways this had to be just as horrible for Barnaby than never finally knowing, for Maverick to have not just taken advantage of what had happened and never wanted it completely resolved for Barnaby, not just taken measures to cover up the truth about it for some self-interested purpose, but to have actually killed them himself and then commited to such a painstakingly thorough manipulation of him as a surrogate father and so unflinchingly played that part in the life he had ruined.  
  
"No," Kotetsu said faintly, shaking his head as they were both clutching each other like there was nothing else stable to hold onto. " _Why_?"  
  
"He's with Ouroboros! He always has been!" Barnaby's eyes were still wide and full of horror, seeming to see more right now than what was in front of him, remembering. "He's orchestrated crimes just to help the show. They figured it out, so he—"  
  
As his voice caught with a sob, Kotetsu reached a hand up to his hair, just holding the back of his head securely. "I'm so sorry," he said in a low voice. "He won't get away with it, Bunny, I swear we'll—"  
  
" _God_..." Barnaby's eyes shut tight again and he sank forward, his head almost falling against him. "It won't stop coming back,  _all_  of it, I don't want to see all of this! I can't..."  
  
"Hey, hey, I've got you," Kotetsu said, keeping a not too close but strong hold on him. "You'll be okay, Bunny... _Bunny_!"  
  
Barnaby was swaying to one side, his eyes rolling up. Then they closed and he fell limp and still on the road.  
  
"Hey!" Kotetsu said, leaning over him and giving him a couple shakes. Then he heard repeating beeps and saw Barnaby’s callband was lighting up. He picked up his wrist to answer it. “Agnes?”  
  
Her voice came through, urgent and overwhelmed. “Tiger! What’s going on? What’s wrong with Barnaby?”  
  
He was rendered silent in surprise for a second. “Wait—You remember me now, too?”  
  
“Of course, I—This is crazy, I don’t know what’s happened! I feel like I’ve just been slipped a hell of a roofie and woke up in the middle of some ridicuous and elaborate prank.”  
  
“It’s Maverick, he’s been screwing up everyone’s memories. Barnaby just recovered his, too, but—I don't know, I guess there was a lot more for him to remember, and he passed out. It’s happened to him before, I think he’s fine...”  
  
She was silent a moment as she processed all of that. “Well, then I think I can tell you what happened,” she said dryly. “Maverick’s dead.”  
  
He blinked. “Dead? _How_?"  
  
“Lunatic," she explained simply. "Maverick had just come in because he meant to meet with me and Lunatic showed up and got him. How he knew anything about all of this I can’t imagine.”  
  
“Did someone see it happen? How do you know this?”  
  
“Because he just came and _told_ us that he did it and warned us that we better get out of the building if we don’t want to die, too. The whole place is still evacuated except for us in the studio, so he’s started a damn fire.”  
  
Kotetsu’s eyes widened as those words sunk in, so much more serious than she was actually making them sound. “The Apollon Media building’s on  _fire_? Well, get out of there!”  
  
“We are just now,” she said, strangely calm about saying it like only Agnes could be.  
  
“Are the other Heroes alright?” he had to ask quickly. “My daughter was still with them.”  
  
“Yes—I don’t know where they have her now, but they know what’s happening and I’ve sent them to do what they can to stop Lunatic. We’ve sent an ambulance for you two, just stay there.”  
  
There were so many other things he could have asked then, but he knew they couldn’t keep talking right now. “Right—And you get out of there, Agnes,  _don’t_  try to film anything!”  
  
He heard an exasperated sigh from her. “Don’t worry, I’m quite done getting this mess caught on camera today,” she said before breaking communication.  
  
He looked back down at Barnaby, lifted him up across his lap to see his face closer, and gave him another light shake. “Bunny!”  
  
Barnaby’s head lolled off to one side and his chest kept moving barely noticeably with breath, but he still wouldn’t wake up. Kotetsu held his face with one hand, tilting it back toward him, and he leaned over to kiss his forehead with his eyes shut tight with brimming emotion. “It’s okay now, Bunny,” he said softly, getting an arm under his legs. “It's done with. He's gone.” He started lifting up Barnaby's upper body with his other arm, making his head fall back. “Guess I gotta carry _you_  for once, huh?”  
  
It was hard to do, even with both of them carrying only partial armor on them. The last couple days he had already been running and fighting so much of the time with little rest, and now as he stood up lifting Barnaby with him, he felt all the sudden how sore and battered he was from all the attacks he'd taken. He knew an ambulance was on its way, but if any of that confrontation really had been broadcasted just now, he wanted to get as far away from this immediate area as possible before the crowds started gathering hoping to see more. His head felt groggy and his feet kept dragging more and more, but he kept going until he had made it almost off the bridge.  
  
He managed just three more steps and then stumbled to his knees, sighing, "Shit." He heard the shrill sirens approaching just before he lowered Barnaby all the way and collapsed onto his chest.

 

 

He knew where he was as soon as he opened his eyes. Sternbild General Hospital was located pretty close to Apollon Media and most of the other Hero agency companies, and by now he felt like he knew half the staff of this emergency room after all the times he'd been treated here before. The nurse taking care of him was a handsome young man with black hair who Kotetsu was pretty sure he'd heard called Adam several times in the past—yeah, A. KIRSHNER it said on the ID he wore. As soon he woke up he started looking around, already knowing it was pointless; the staff at this hospital had perfected their own unconventional procedure for handling Hero patients without compromising their secrecy, so he had already been brought into a very isolated room just for shining a flashlight in his eyes and the rest of the fussing-over routine he knew was coming before they'd be satisfied he didn't need anything more than a few bandages and let him be on his way.  
  
When he immediately wanted to know where his partner was, Adam smiled as if thinking he should have been ready for that. "Are you going to be as difficult as he was?" he asked, holding him in place with a hand on his chest after he sat up anxiously. "He's just fine, sir, I think we just let him go. He seemed to have just passed out from exhaustion. You can join him as soon as we can be sure your injuries aren't serious."  
  
That put him a little at ease, but he couldn't help being somewhat impatient while trying to cooperate until it was determined that at worst he had a minor concussion, overall nothing that rest and putting ice on everything wouldn't help.  
  
When he was finally making his way through the halls toward the main entrance of the emergency room, he heard an urgent "Excuse me" from behind him as a group had to run past him pushing a gurney. When he followed them around a corner, he saw who they were taking it to: Antonio was rushing forward, carrying Karina in his arms. For a frozen instant, all Kotetsu saw was the blood.  
  
"Karina!" he gasped as Antonio quickly set her down on the gurney, and then they both started following for a while as she was taken off down the hall. She was cut up all along one side of her face and body, some pieces of glass stuck in her arm. Almost the whole right side of the bodice of her costume was darkened red with blood from the deepest cut on her inner arm. Above it her arm was secured with a tourniquet put together with a length of cloth from something and what looked like part of a thin table leg, which she was holding in place with a trembling, white-knuckled hand. On top of it all, it looked like the wrist of her same arm was broken. Pale and shaking in pain, Karina looked like she was barely keeping from passing out.  
  
"Things got messy," Antonio explained quickly after he saw him.  
  
Attempting a smile that just looked kind of delirious, Karina looked up at Kotetsu and said, "You called me Karina. Wow. I must look  _really_  bad."  
  
He looked at her with a sympathetic grimace. "Hang in there, alright?"  
  
"You're gonna be fine," Antonio assured her. "Before you know it you'll be all drugged up and dreamy-eyed staring up at that pretty-boy nurse you and Fire Emblem are always giggling over here..."  
  
That got some more certain signs of life out of her, making her roll her eyes and groan, "Ugh, shut up, I do  _not_..."  
  
That got Kotetsu to smile just a little as they took her back through some double doors and out of sight, and then he turned towards Antonio as he took off his helmet for a moment. Getting some deep breaths and shaking around his sweaty hair, he started explaining. "It looked like we might not be able to stop Lunatic from torching the whole place, but then he finally took off after Origami got a blade in his back. We thought some of us could chase him down while he was hurt, but we lost him just a block away from here, right after Blue Rose took a fall dodging his fire and fell through a window."  
  
Kotetsu cringed.  
  
"You know, she was the one who called Agnes and convinced her to send the cameras over there," he said. "When it looked like he honestly might kill you, she hoped it might stop him from going that far if he had everyone watching."   
  
"Good thinking. I'm sure if anyone  _were_  going to kill me, Agnes wouldn't miss it for anything."  
  
Antonio managed to huff with laughter. Then, remembering something, he went on, "Oh right, Kaede—Dragon Kid stayed out of everything to stay with her the whole time. They're probably back with all the others now." With that thought, his face fell into a gruff frown, and it wasn't hard for Kotetsu to guess he was remembering his last words to him from before. "And don't ever be saying shit like that to me again."  
  
He just lowered his eyes a moment. "Sorry...So how bad  _is_  the damage?"  
  
"Nothing devastating. It spread mostly to office areas on the upper floors. They'll still be able to conduct business in most of the usual places while that part's under reconstruction...Still, enough damage is done now that everybody saw the building on fire on the news. You realize how bad this looks?"  
  
"That we let Lunatic get away with something again? Is that really the worst thing that's happened tonight?"  
  
"That's not what I mean. Somehow that son of a bitch figured everything out about Maverick. Like that's not gonna do wonders for validating that giant God complex of his in the eyes of some people. And after getting Maverick, he moves right on to trying to send a message or something against the entire company?"  
  
Kotetsu's eyes widened a little. "I see your point."  
  
"So everyone's memories are back to normal now, right? Barnaby's, too?"  
  
"Yeah, I guess it was just Maverick dying that did it somehow."  
  
"If I wasn't just reminded of what a bastard and a half Lunatic is..."  
  
Kotetsu frowned. "I know." That wasn't something he was ready to think about now. How lucky they really had gotten to make it out of this dark tunnel by now, all because Lunatic was apparently the most formidable detective in Sternbild and had good timing. After all, he had a feeling that Barnaby being able to recover  _every_  memory Maverick had ever written over had overall not been much of a mercy. There was no telling what and how much he was carrying around now.  
  
Which all made Kotetsu unable to have much interest in everything else Antonio was telling him about, as serious and shocking as it sounded. Now that he knew everyone else was okay, he found he couldn't care much about all the professional concerns this had raised, or whether Lunatic had gotten away or not, or how almost everyone in Sternbild had to be watching coverage about this whole incident and coming to their own conclusions about it before they even had the whole story. All he could care about right now was how Barnaby was dealing with this.  
  
"Right..." Antonio lifted his helmet to put it back on. "Guess I'll see you back there."  
  
"Yeah," Kotetsu said. "Tell Kaede I'll be coming right back as soon as I can."  
  
Antonio nodded, then rushed off down the hall and around a corner to get to a back exit.  
  
As he made his way toward the front desk area, Kotetsu started wondering whether it might be better to just take off his mask and hope nobody recognized him just from the black jumpsuit. For all he knew, the recent events since he was framed had made it easy enough for the public to put two and two together and the whole secret of his identity had just been blown anyway. He hadn't come to any decision about it before a nurse stopped him, looking surprised to see him headed this way. "Oh...Wild Tiger, sir?" she said with her voice kept low. "You don't have to leave that way, there are a  _lot_  of people out there to see you right now."  
  
"Yeah, I'm just trying to find Mr. Brooks," he explained. "He should have been released already."  
  
"Let me go find out for you," she said, and then left him there waiting in the hall. When she returned a minute later, she told him Barnaby had left a message up front for him that he would be up on the rooftop landing. He thanked her for her help and then went to find the nearest elevator.  
  
It felt a little surreal to find Barnaby up on the roof, leaning one shoulder into the fence that surrounded the top of the building. They had been up here together before, right after Kriem had died here with her last words that would make the world stop for them for a while. It felt like it had been such a long time ago, but here they were, back together. It seemed everything besides that had changed so fast, with this left as the only constant.  
  
When Barnaby heard someone appraoching and turned to see him, he took on an overwhelmed look like he didn't even know what he could say now. His mouth had moved to speak once already before he finally got something out. "Are you alright?" he asked once Kotetsu was within a couple strides of him, and then started shaking his head. "Kotetsu, I'm so s—"  
  
"Shut up," he muttered, pulling him close with strong arms.  
  
He had never tried this, actually giving Barnaby a hug. He didn't expect him to accept it very readily, as he was pretty sure hugging was a language Barnaby had needed to re-learn for quite a long time of his life. And sure enough, his first reaction was to just go stiff in surprise, drawing in a quick and mildly shocked breath, as if he didn't know what to do. Then his arms slowly raised and found where to go, and there, now he had it, clutching Kotetsu's back almost too tight while he still felt so sore all over.  
  
"This is so fucked up, Bunny," Kotetsu said softly, almost right into his ear. "I don't even have any words..."  
  
He heard Barnaby's breathing get a little shaky for a moment as they kept holding onto each other.  
  
"I'm sorry, too, by the way," he went on. "Just in case you're still mad at me."  
  
"Heh..." It was almost a hysterical laugh, sounding more like a sob. "I can barely remember it now."  
  
Kotetsu kept holding him, waiting for his every muscle to stop feeling so tense.  
  
Then Barnaby asked quietly the only question that could follow that mention of their last encounter days ago, and with it his voice started sounding empty and detached in a way Kotetsu hated. "Are you still quitting?"  
  
In the following silence, they slowly drew away from each other. Kotetsu dropped his face down, staring at his feet sadly for a moment. "Yeah. I can't change that."  
  
A tired and melancholy acceptance settled in Barnaby's expression, and then he looked right at him with his eyes sort of pleading. "Why?"  
  
He made the one word sound so heavy, like something such a long time coming, no joking around this time. Kotetsu had every intention of finally explaining, but when he opened his mouth nothing would come out yet and he just ended up sighing in frustration.  
  
"Were you lying about it before just so I wouldn't feel bad?" Barnaby said, his eyes shifting away uneasily, and Kotetsu straightened up with surprise. "Is it because I...? Because I haven't been honest about everything either, is the ridiculous thing, and I'm sorry, I—"  
  
"Bunny," he interrupted, shaking his head. " _No._  It's nothing to do with you, it's not even really a  _choice_  for me."  
  
"No, please, just—" Barnaby was starting to sound almost frantic, putting his hands up to stop him. " _Don't._  I can  _handle_  it, okay? If you never tell me the real reason, I can't even—"  
  
"I'm  _trying_  to tell you," Kotetsu said, grabbing his upper arms firmly and looking straight at him. "Seriously, it's not anything you've done. It's not because I don't  _want_  to work with you anymore. It's about my powers."  
  
Barnaby shook his head. "What?"  
  
"They're declining. I'm losing my powers."  
  
Barnaby stared at him in astonishment, but not the right kind; it was amazement at the ridiculousness of what he was hearing that quickly turned into bitterness. There was hurt and anger starting to come into his eyes when he opened his mouth again, but Kotetsu interrupted him again.  
  
"Bunny, I  _swear_ , it's true," he said in an uneasy but steady voice, holding him firmly and making him look right at him. "I didn't know this could happen to anyone either, but it's happening to me all the same. My time limit keeps getting shorter. You haven't noticed because I was being careful to hide it, but it started weeks ago."  
  
Barnaby's face was changing the more he let himself look directly into Kotetsu's eyes. Now as he started shaking his head again, he looked full of shock. "No," he said, sounding almost desperate, his hand reaching out to his chest like he felt if he held onto him he could fix all of this. "No, you  _can't_..."  
  
He gave him a weak smile. "There's nothing to be done. I'm sorry."  
  
"But I don't understand, is it...Is there something  _wrong_  with you?"  
  
Barnaby was nervously gripping him where one of his shoulders met his neck; Kotetsu assuringly grabbed his wrist to lower his hand away. "No, there's no known  _cause_  for it, I'm perfectly healthy. I'm just...turning normal." He looked down a moment as they let go of each other and gave a dry laugh. "It's crazy...There was a time when I would have liked nothing more than for this to happen to me."  
  
Barnaby now just had a look of deep regret and sympathy. "I'm so sorry, Kotetsu." He sighed. "Why didn't you just  _tell_  me? You shouldn't have had to deal with this alone. I know a lot has been going on recently, but you should have told me as soon as it started happening."  
  
"I know. I know that now..." Attempting a small smile, he added, "I guess it's just hard for an old man to admit he's getting weak."  
  
"Well, that's not fair at all. I've told you... _everything_ , I mean...I've been more honest and open with you than I've ever been with anyone."  
  
"No, it  _wasn't_  fair. You're right."  
  
Barnaby's expression smoothed over into a resigned and accepting one, and he looked out across the city in the direction of the Apollon Media building. From here, they could see a little bit of the darkened corner of the structure that had burned, the slightly bruised color of the sky above the building. It was strange, now of all times, for Kotetsu to feel the least bit of attachment to the place, but it still came as a small unpleasant shock to see it that way.  
  
"Have you heard if everyone's okay?" Barnaby asked.  
  
"Yeah, I think so," Kotetsu answered. "They just brought Blue Rose in 'cause she got it pretty rough, but she should be alright."  
  
"...I could see some of the fire," he said, his voice turned a little numb as he kept looking that way. "Before they had the last of it put out...It still makes me uneasy. But still, now I just feel kind of pathetic about how much it used to unsettle me sometimes."  
  
"You mean fire?" he asked softly as he realized what he was talking about.  
  
Barnaby nodded, turning his face back to him but keeping it pointed down. "The memory isn't so vivid anymore. It's like it never was. Sights like that don't bring all the images to the surface so sharply. It's like it's supposed to be something I can keep locked up in some dark place, but he wouldn't let me. He kept the memory strong...I feel like I'm seeing for the first time how I was. How obsessed with it and easily controlled by that torment I was."  
  
"I think that just means you're stronger than you've ever realized," Kotetsu said. "I've always been able to see that."  
  
"You don't understand...I feel... _empty_  without it." As he kept looking away from him, he said it with so much shame, like he actually expected to be judged for it.  
  
He grabbed Barnaby's wrist briefly to make him look back at him. "Of course you feel that way right now," he said gently. "You've found out almost everything in your life was a lie. But I know you better than that. I know you weren't feeling this way the first time you thought your parents' murderer had been taken care of, and I know you've always had what it takes to survive and move on. Nobody's expecting you to feel ready to do that  _right now._ "  
  
The look in his eyes softened, then seemed to crumble a little, and he shook his head again. "You and me...that's the only thing that  _has_  been real. How could I still have pushed you away so easily? Why couldn't I tell the difference?"  
  
"Don't do that," Kotetsu said, shaking his head. "It wasn't your doing. Don't start thinking that way."  
  
Barnaby turned away a little, looking in the same direction as before. "Just tell me it's really over this time." He said it like the words were still kind of like a hopeless dream that he was afraid to believe.  
  
Kotetsu reached for his shoulder and gripped it surely. "It's over."  
  
Barnaby reached up and gripped his hand over his as he kept silently absorbing a view that would never look the same as it used to.


	7. Laughing Like a Heifer To the Slaughter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I've finally gotten back into writing this and am making a lot of progress on the whole second half of the story (just not necessarily in the order the chapters are supposed to go, LOL), and I noticed meanwhile that I somehow forgot to ever add the most recent chapter here after I'd posted it on LJ and FF. SORRY GUYS. Here it finally is.

 

 

 

After Barnaby told him he wanted to stay at the hospital a while and would join him later, Kotetsu used his Hundred Power to get back to Apollon. When he ran as fast as possible on foot he could be practically invisible, and at a time like this it was better to be as discreet as possible about where exactly he or his partner were to avoid attention. It also allowed him to accelerate his healing a little, which would get him through the rest of the night easier even though that aspect of his powers always had the unfortunate effect of being a little draining to use in its own way.  
  
Swarms of people had accumulated across the street from the part of the building that was now burned to a crisp, but inside most of the place was still almost eerily empty. He was glad to find his clothes still right where he'd stashed them in one of the bathrooms when he'd managed to sneak past security into the building before and had to change into his old costume. After hiding out in the streets dressed in them, he was sure these were not fit to put back on without a wash, but now at least he had his phone, wallet, and keys back.   
  
When he went to his locker to get into an extra change of clothes he kept around, he found a note taped to it in Nathan's handwriting that just said  _Fifth floor offices._  As long as he was here, he decided to grab a quick shower before changing clothes as he was sure he probably needed it badly. As he buttoned up his shirt, he peered into a mirror a moment, checking how good a job he'd done healing everything up at least externally. It was no longer hurting to swallow like it had been before and the bruises he'd felt around his neck from Barnaby choking him were gone, but after the beating he'd taken from both Antonio and Barnaby he could tell his stomach and the place where he'd been hit in the head were still going to be sensitive for a while.  
  
On the fifth floor he found almost everyone waiting around with somewhat morose faces. Ivan, Pao-Lin, Antonio, and Kaede were all seated or standing in a group around a table and watching something on a computer screen, while Nathan stood off in a corner with Agnes in what looked like a quite cheerless conversation. Some other associates were also hovering around, including Pao-Lin's agent and Mr. Lloyds who were both off in their own spaces with their voices lowered in conversations on their phones.  
  
When Kotetsu approached the four gathered close to the screen, he saw what they were watching. The footage was a close-up of him and Barnaby on the bridge earlier, a dull and distant but still understandable audio track of everything being said accompanying it as Barnaby was yelling, "He's with Ouroboros! He always has been!"  
  
Antonio and Pao-Lin had just noticed him there and turned their heads. For a moment they seemed a little uneasy as they watched him watching this, as if it made them feel suddenly kind of guilty that  _they_  were. It was certainly strange and kind of uncomfortable seeing it like this, terrible in a whole different way than it had been to experience it. It had been the resolution of something with such intensely personal repercussions for Barnaby that he knew neither of them at the time had been able to think of anything else and be aware of anything but each other, but as he saw it like this in what looked like some kind of twisted imitation of their program, it only now completely hit him that all of that had happened while they were being the Heroes Tiger and Barnaby. Everyone had actually seen this, Barnaby uncontrollably losing that whole cool exterior he had always maintained in his image on TV.  
  
And the worst part wasn't even that, but the way the episode just ended with this and no encouraging finale. It kept going all the way until Barnaby passed out, and then right after a marquee at the bottom of the screen told of an unexplained fire that had just started at the Apollon Media headquarters, it cut to a commercial in the recording.  
  
"All of  _that_  was what went on air?" Kotetsu said.  
  
Pao-Lin gave a small nod.  
  
His eyes went wide a moment. "Holy crap..."  
  
"Dad!" Kaede said, just then turning and seeing him after hearing him there. She rushed over to his side and he smiled down at her, wrapping an arm around her and pulling her close to his side. He looked up at Antonio and murmured, "Great, just let her watch this."  
  
He looked a little guilty but still replied under his breath, "They didn't catch much of him beating the crap out of you."  
  
He replied sarcastically, "Not much. Thank goodness."  
  
"She's gonna see it  _somehow_  sooner or later!"  
  
He sighed, having to admit that was probably true.  
  
"How is he now?" Ivan asked him, now turned around to face the others.  
  
Unable to give that any definite answer while everyone was now looking at him, he just shook his head. Then he looked around the room, suddenly realizing who was missing. "Wait, where's Sky High?"  
  
"He had to go to the hospital, too," Antonio said. "Got brought in right before Blue Rose, I thought you might have known. Don't worry, it's nothing too bad."  
  
Kotetsu nodded and then looked down at Kaede. He was about to finally talk to her before Antonio groaned quietly, "Oh, here they come," suddenly looking a little annoyed while someone approached them, a man with a small group of armed people here who Kotetsu had assumed at first glace walking in were some of their security guards. Only now as his attention was drawn to this one did he notice they all had police badges.  
  
"Kotetsu Kaburagi?" he said. "We need to speak with you, please."  
  
At that, Antonio looked affronted and cut in, "Pardon me, but he's still Wild Tiger. How about a little respect as long as we're getting the civilian treatment here?"  
  
"Woah, easy," Kotetsu said with a smirk, holding a hand out to quiet him.  
  
"I'm sorry to inconvenience you," the officer said just a little snidely, "but recent events have made it especially important that even guys like you don't consider themselves above the system, don't you think?"  
  
As he let his eyes slowly shift back over toward Antonio, Kotetsu kept a straight face, but he was starting to see why Antonio seemed to have a problem with this guy. "I seem to have missed something," he said. "Why  _are_  we getting this kind of treatment?"  
  
Antonio cut off the officer when he opened his mouth to answer again. "They can't just hold the case on Samantha Stone and wait to read our reports on this one," he explained. "They need to get statements from almost everyone to clarify a lot of things before they can be sure they don't still need to arrest you."  
  
"Oh." Now that he heard it that way, he felt like he should have expected this, but he didn't like it at all. This meant they were probably going to have to talk to Barnaby, too, which he was sure he wouldn't really feel up to right now. He turned back to the police officer and pointed down at Kaede's head. "I need a moment to talk to my daughter first, if you don't mind."  
  
"Very well, we'll wait." He pointed toward a meeting room where the other couple officers were sitting to show him where they would be.  
  
"I've already been in with them," Antonio said. "I could go ahead and take Kaede over to your place if you're probably gonna be here a while longer. It's getting pretty late."  
  
"Yeah, that's not a bad idea," Kotetsu said. He fished into his pocket for his keys, handed them to Antonio, and then put a hand on Kaede's shoulder as he turned to face her.  
  
"What's going on?" she asked him with a worried look fixed on all the cops. "Don't they know now you didn't do it?"  
  
"Yeah, yeah, it's not that," he assured her. "They just need to ask everybody some questions about what happened. I'm sorry if all this has been pretty scary for you, but it'll all get worked out now."  
  
As soon as that concern was put to rest, her mind automatically went to something else like she'd been urgently waiting to say it all the time she was waiting here. "Dad, you aren't really going to quit now, are you?"  
  
"Huh?" he asked in surprise.  
  
"Please don't quit being a Hero! I don't want you to!"  
  
As soon as it was all out of her mouth, he realized everyone near had heard and was looking at them in surprise. He looked up at Antonio with an apologetic look while nearly the whole room was quiet. Agnes was the first to break out of the spell of awkwardness as her startled reaction was replaced with the completely resigned look of someone who has finally been pushed past the limit of caring about anything for the time being except getting a cigarette or cup of coffee. She just turned away to leave the area, muttering under her breath, " _Merde_ ," and then the others all drifted off a little ways to give them some more space to themselves.  
  
"Oh boy," he said with a sigh and a nervous smile as he looked back at Kaede.  
  
"I'm sorry for making you promise to come home," she said. "Now I know it's not important."  
  
Kotetsu looked at her very seriously and directly, kneeling down in front of her and then reaching up to grasp both her shoulders in a firm hold. "What do you mean 'not important'? It's important to  _me_ , okay? And anyway, there are other reasons...We'll have to talk about it tomorrow, alright?"  
  
"So you won't make me go back home already tomorrow? Please let me stay with you a while!"  
  
He bit his lip, thinking. "I'd like that, but it's hard to say what the next several days are going to be like right now. You just call Grandma as soon as you get to my place and tell her we're going to have to figure it out and let her know later. I'm sure she and your uncle are staying up going crazy waiting to hear something from us. Then I know you'll be a good girl with Antonio here and go right to bed, right? You need to soon if you  _do_  want to hang around long tomorrow."  
  
She nodded with a bit of obvious reluctance, probably too excited right now to really be aware of the need to sleep yet.  
  
"Alright, I love you," he said as he got back up on his feet and then hugged her close. "I'll be home as soon as possible, 'cause Papa really needs to go to bed, too."  
  
"Okay," she said softly as he bent over to kiss the top of her head before turning away.  
  
When he went into the meeting room moments later, he found the police officer he'd talked to before wasn't there, just another guy and a woman. He sat down as they told him their names and then replied a bit dryly, "Tiger. Since you apparently already know."  
  
"Oh, we can assure you that no information that confirms your real identity will be released to the public," said the woman, who had introduced herself as Sergeant Leung.  
  
He nodded. "What happened to the other guy?"  
  
The two looked a little hesitant to answer. "He admitted that it may not be best for him to be involved in this investigation because it's become somewhat personal for him," Leung explained.  
  
He lifted an eyebrow. "How, may I ask? Did he  _know_  Samantha?"  
  
There was another pause of hesitation before the other officer gave in and said, "His father-in-law was killed in one of the bombings during the Ouroboros incident in January."  
  
His stomach sank a little. In January, she said, because now there was a need to specify. Now the public knew there was no telling what incidents  _hadn't_  been connected to Ouroboros and couldn't be traced back to the very network that had aired recordings of them happening.  
  
"What's that got to do with me?" he asked with a frown.  
  
Leung's tone was not accusatory, just matter-of-fact, but what she said still hit him coldly. "Well, nothing, of course, besides that it was the event in your careers that allowed you and your partner to gain the success and popularity you have now." She paused as he stiffened a little in reaction to that. "Anyway, we'll try to get through with this as quickly as possible. Please start by telling us what you were doing at Samantha Stone's house and be as precise as you can about when you were there."  
  
His mind was getting so tired and sluggish by now that some of the details they asked him about were a little difficult to remember clearly. Certain shocking moments from the last few days stuck out so strongly in his memory he was probably never going to forget exactly how they happened, while nearly everything else now felt like it had passed in a quick blur of adrenaline and stress. He knew by now they must have heard enough from the others to be fairly certain he was innocent and mostly just needed to confirm a lot of specifics, but the interview was still thorough enough that once it was done he felt it had taken what was left of his mental energy out of him.  
  
He went back out of the room to find Barnaby and Nathan sitting together as if they might have been talking before, but now just waiting in silence. Nathan told them he was going to go drop by the hospital to see Keith and Karina and took off. Before Barnaby was brought in to give his account, Kotetsu told him he was going to find an office with a couch somewhere around here so he could close his eyes a few minutes while he waited.  
  
"You don't have to stay around for us to get a ride home together," Barnaby said. "Not that I...I appreciate it, but it could be a while now."  
  
"Nah, there's no hurry for me to get out of here now that Kaede left," Kotetsu said, shaking his head. "At this point, I might as well just wait."  
  
Barnaby nodded. In the following brief moment of silence between them, he looked to the side at something and nodded his head that way. "It's a pressure cooker in there," he said dryly.  
  
Kotetsu looked in that direction to see one of the other meeting rooms on this floor. Inside the windows he could see Agnes with the rest of the main  _Hero TV_  staff and most of the corporate superiors engaged in what looked like a very tense meeting. Almost everyone was apparently too worked-up and agitated to even sit down, their body language giving away even from this far away that there was definitely some arguing and even yelling going on.  
  
"I guess they aren't very thrilled about your news," Barnaby added.  
  
It took Kotetsu a moment to realize he had to be referring to the inelegant dropping of the bomb of his plans to retire. It could hardly be the main subject being addressed in that room right now, but it certainly  _had_  now become a pretty bad time for him to leave the show.  
  
He gave Barnaby a heavy pat on the arm before they parted and he walked off to wander down a nearby hallway of office doors. At a time like this it was kind of like wandering through a graveyard, seeing inside all the dark and vacant offices. He finally peeked through a doorway into one that had a couch inside right by the door. As soon as he lied down, he seemed to finally feel the complete weight of how tired he was. It gave him some momentary peace to know only Barnaby knew where he was at the moment, because he couldn't be Wild Tiger right now. Wasn't anymore, in fact. It seemed the company was facing some serious predicaments right now, and for the first time it actually felt easily like a blessing that all those things weren't his problem anymore.  
  
  
  
  
A sound from someone's phone down the hall woke him up and he looked around, disoriented until he remembered where he was. There were less lights on around this floor than before, but in the dim light coming from outside the room he was able to squint to make out the time on a clock on the wall. More than half past midnight.  
  
He heard someone breathing close to him, then saw a blond head by his knees. Barnaby had dozed off sitting on the floor in front of him with his head fallen back against the couch.  
  
Kotetsu let his eyes fall shut again.  
  
  
  
  
"Uh...Mr. Wild Tiger, sir?"  
  
The unfamiliar voice above him and a delicate shake of his shoulder woke him up to bright lights. A tall woman with a thick afro of hair was peering over him and looking a little apologetic about waking him.  
  
"Woah," he said, sitting up abruptly and then cringing a little at the lingering stiffness and soreness of his body. "What time is it?"  
  
"Getting close to eight," she answered. "You... _are_  Tiger, aren't you? Because if you are, everyone seems to be looking for you. I was told they haven't been able to reach you on your...thing." She pointed to her own wrist to indicate what she was talking about.  
  
"Oh," he said, looking down at his now useless callband. "Yeah, I guess it's still deactivated...So what, are they having the whole building searched for me?"  
  
"Uh. No." She smiled a little awkwardly. "This is my office."  
  
He went still a second and then looked around, seeing what must have been her bag set on the desk where the lamp was now illuminated.  
  
"Oh, of course," he said with some embarrassment as he stood up. "Crap.  _Sorry_..."  
  
"Don't worry about it," she said. "With all the offices that fire took out, I'll probably have to get  _used_  to sharing mine for a while."  
  
Kotetsu laughed briefly at that, which felt a little surreal and strange after the kind of night he'd just woken up from, and told her thanks as he left the room. When he headed right for the nearest elevator, he was surprised to find Barnaby waiting near it. As soon as he noticed Kotetsu coming his way, he got up from the chair he'd been sitting in to go meet him.  
  
"You still haven't been home?" Kotetsu asked.  
  
Barnaby shook his head. "I did what you did and haven't been awake long. Besides, I...kind of wanted to talk to you." His eyes shifted down briefly as he said it, and it was unclear exactly what he meant by it, if there was actually something specific he wanted to tell him about. Before Kotetsu could wonder that much about it, Barnaby remembered something else and said with a change of subject, "Sorry, but when Blue Rose was around earlier I made the mistake of mentioning I was here waiting for you."  
  
"She's already gotten out of the hospital and been over here?" he asked in surprise.  
  
Barnaby shrugged. "Well, apparently her employers didn't even wait until she was out before letting her get the news that they're screwing her over."  
  
"What are you talking about?"  
  
Shaking his head, he said, "I'll tell you later...Anyway, she didn't realize there was reason not to repeat what I said to anyone, and now the word got around that you never even left last night."  
  
Kotetsu took a quick look around at everyone in this area, where it seemed things were just getting busy enough by this hour of the morning to have provided them some cover so far. He gave Barnaby a nudge to signal him to follow as he started for the elevator. "Don't worry, hardly anyone's  _seen_  me yet..."  
  
Then right after he pressed the button by the elevator to go down, he heard "Tiger!"  
  
Recognizing Agnes's voice, he closed his eyes a second and muttered, "Dammit."  
  
They both turned around in surrender as they heard her heels fearsomely stabbing across the floor toward them. "I need to speak with you," she said to Kotetsu, seizing him by the arm as if he needed to be restrained from trying to make an escape. "Immediately."  
  
"Seriously, Agnes?" he said in a wince. "I haven't been home yet!"  
  
"Do you want to have to come _back in_  today?"  
  
"Well, I realize this has been a pretty bad way to spring this on you, but I don't really plan on _having_  to..."  
  
She dropped her hand with a frustrated groan and seemed to take a moment to make the effort to stay calm. "Right," she said. "Can we talk about  _that_?"  
  
Kotetsu sighed in resignation. He supposed he might as well get this conversation over and done with now. "What's with  _you_  meeting with me? Isn't Mr. Lloyds in?"  
  
"Yes, but I'm not even sure where he is right now," she said, her eyes widening in an overwhelmed look for a moment. Obviously things weren't proceeding with the best organization today, but Kotetsu still had a feeling Agnes had been put up to this because everyone knew how compelling she could be, or in other words, kind of scary.  
  
"Barnaby,  _you_  don't have to be here at all," she said with surprise as she turned to him. "You haven't even had any time off since..."  
  
Since Samantha was found murdered, since this whole nightmare got started. It was probably impossible to make Agnes Joubert feel awkward, and Kotetsu could see it was merely uncertainty about how to put it that kept her from finishing that statement more than delicacy and sensitivity. Still, he felt a little grateful to her for just letting Barnaby off the hook for now even though everyone had to realize the possibility of him staying was now in question, too.  
  
"I know, it's alright," Barnaby replied. "I'm just going to wait for Kotetsu."  
  
Agnes glanced down at her watch in a lightning-fast movement and asked them both, "Do you even have a way to get home?"  
  
"Uh, no, not yet," Kotetsu said, remembering they had neither of their own cars here and frowning at the thought of how hard it would be to get a cab right now. "Bunny, do you just want to—?"  
  
He was cut off when Agnes turned around and called across the room, "Paul! Who's seen Paul?"  
  
"Here, Ms. Joubert," said an assistant just then rushing by them. "Sorry, I'm taking care of it right now."  
  
She stopped him a moment as she said, "No, forget what I just sent you to do right now. I need a car for Mr. Brooks and Mr. Kaburagi in twenty minutes."  
  
At the words "twenty minutes" he instantly hustled off with only a quick nod in response.  
  
Barnaby left to go downstairs, telling Kotetsu he'd meet him around the front entrance, and then Agnes led him into her office and shut the door on the screaming of phones outside. He sat down in a chair in front of her desk with a quiet groan of effort, moving slowly because bending forward still hurt around his abdomen a little, which Agnes seemed to notice as she went around the desk to her seat.  
  
"You look awful," she said in a bleak monotone as she sat down.  
  
"Give me a break, I haven't had a chance for a shave in days." The attempt at brushing it off with levity came out dry and half-hearted and probably just made it all sound worse.  
  
Agnes picked her purse up from the floor and started digging through it. After Kotetsu watched this in some confusion for a while, she pulled out a bottle of pills. "Here," she said, sliding it across the table for him to catch it.  
  
Kotetsu looked at the label on the bottle of painkillers and gave a low huff of laughter. "This is not weak stuff," he said. "Should I be worried you carry these around with you?"  
  
It got a reluctant smile from her. "I'm always prepared for anything."  
  
As Kotetsu opened the top and then knocked back one pill right into his mouth to swallow it dry, she got down to business. "So," she said, folding her hands together on the table. "All the terms haven't been agreed on yet, but I'm _supposed_ to be letting you know that we're prepared to offer both you and Barnaby a very generous amount of money with a contract that will commit you to at least six more months on the show."  
  
In spite of himself, Kotetsu had to give himself a moment of somewhat amused satisfaction. Even if partnering up with Barnaby had made him a much more valued Hero than before, all the times he'd thought of having this conversation he'd never imagined it turning into him practically being begged to stay.   
  
"But that's not what you're actually doing, of course," he replied with a smirk. " _That_  would suggest you actually think we can be bought back, which would be pretty rude."  
  
She sighed, seeing this obviously wasn't going anywhere. "Do you even want to know what the number is?"  
  
"It doesn't make any difference," he said with a frown.  
  
"Tiger, if both the Heroes who represent us quit right after all this, what is that going to look like? There's no  _Hero TV_  without Apollon Media. Even if you're not feeling a lot of loyalty at the moment, despite the fact that you and Barnaby are far from the only ones here who feel pretty screwed over by who we were working for, you must realize what's bad for this company is bad for  _everyone._ "  
  
"Yeah, I know it's bad timing. Believe me, I don't  _want_  to leave here completely biting the hand off. It's not even about what just happened, I'd already intended to quit as soon as possible."  
  
"What's making you have to leave your job so much you can't stay for just six more months? What about a few  _weeks_?"  
  
"Look, I literally  _can't_  keep being a Hero for much longer. My powers have been declining. A few months are probably all I have left in me before my time limit will have gotten so low you'd only find me even more of a useless pain than usual."  
  
Agnes's eyes were sucked blank in her surprise. "You're kidding."  
  
He shook his head, looking down at the top of the desk. "There isn't any insurance claim to file for this kind of thing," he said, utterly failing this time to manage a joking tone. "...It's just over."  
  
She settled back in her chair slowly, her hands falling into her lap, and finally just said with defeat, "I'm sorry about that."  
  
Coming from Agnes, it was a lot. He replied with a small, grim smile.  
  
Her face now full of heavy resignation, she let out a long sigh and said, "We're going to lose both of you, aren't we?"  
  
"Would that make you sad?" he said, giving her a familiarly mocking sort of smirk. "Or just professionally disappointed?"  
  
Some annoyance crossed her features, but then she shook her head with something almost like a smile on her face. "If I say it would make me sad, will you talk to Barnaby?"  
  
His look sunk right back into a frown. "God dammit, Agnes—"  
  
"Have you  _seen_  the footage that went out?"  
  
"Yeah, I did. I  _know_  it all looks really bad. But that evil bloodsucking bastard was the one who maneuvered him toward this career in the first place through murder and manipulation, and now you want me to try to convince him it's really his calling after all?"  
  
"Would you really rather see him just give up and disappear now?"  
  
"I don't know. I don't know what he'll want to do with his life from now on and I doubt it's the first thing on his mind right now."  
  
Agnes closed her eyes for a second, seeming to recollect herself. "Yes. I understand all that. I just really, really need you to grasp the state of things right now, if there's any chance you could get him to think about it more. Do you even know what's been happening ever since last night?"  
  
"You mean besides everybody leaving their TVs on to stay updated on the train wreck?"  
  
"Oh, not just that. The sponsors have been calling in one by one, all very unhappy. The concern is that even with Albert Maverick gone, the show may never be able to recover its reputation. Surely as long as this scandal is still hot news the ratings will stay high, but everyone's worried about what will happen after that now that the show has been exposed as more or less a farce for suckers, at least in the eyes of many of the public. Two companies have already decided to cut ties with us and cease funding for their Hero agencies indefinitely because they don't think it's best for their brands to be associated with the name of Apollon Media anymore." Her aggressive tone had completely gone away now; she wasn't still trying to convince him of anything as much as just venting about the nightmare they'd fallen into. "We lost business with  _Pepsi_ , for Christ sake."  
  
Kotetsu was actually starting to get surprised. "Seriously?"  
  
She nodded, closing her eyes as she rubbed her fingertips over her forehead like she was getting a headache. Then she let out a long exhale of breathe and took on a more distant look, saying musingly as a stray thought, "My sister's kids are the  _biggest_  Barnaby fans...She told me she couldn't get them to go to bed after watching that mess last night because they were so upset."  
  
"Yeah. I bet."  
  
"The thing is, though...Kids like them, they don't really know or care who Albert Maverick was. They don't care about the corporations behind the Heroes or get why it should reflect badly on them for one of the CEOs to turn out to be the bad guy. All they want is to see that Barnaby is going to be okay and that somehow the Heroes won this one, too." She looked up to meet his eyes. "If this show can be saved from turning into a small fraction of the success it was before, I just need to get it back on the air as soon as possible with some good news to follow up that disaster."  
  
"What do you want me to tell you?" Kotetsu said with a regretful shrug. "I can only hope he will be, but Barnaby _isn't_  okay. I don't know what good news there is to give now unless you're just going to make up some more bullshit. Maybe you could find Maverick's little book of Ouroboros contacts and set something up."  
  
She sighed with a quick shake of her head. "I know...I don't even know yet how I can put a more positive spin on this. I'm just  _asking_  you to think about this because quitting so soon is only going to make it even harder. And none of the other Heroes are out of the job  _yet,_  but me and possibly some of them are going to be the first to go if this takes a big toll."  
  
"Why you?" he asked, not expecting that.  
  
"Because  _I_  was the one who let all of that go on air," she said. "I figured nothing could be worse for us than him killing somebody while he was out of control. But it's the sloppy presentation more than the content they're saying could kill us, because it was very obviously unanticipated what would happen, which quite possibly makes it look like we never would have let this information go public except by mistake. So now the kind of risks I'm willing to take have suddenly become a serious concern. Poseidon has agreed to continue to support  _Hero TV_  only if I'm removed from the show as director within three weeks, so I have that long to prove I can still turn this around into a good thing or else my bosses will have to make what they assure me will be a difficult decision."  
  
Kotetsu had grown more and more angry listening to this. "That's so screwed up! So basically they wouldn't have cared about Barnaby killing some fugitive off-camera because  _that_  they could have covered up or at least changed the story of somehow."  
  
She smiled sourly. "You're not always as dim as you seem."  
  
"Well, I do know some dark secrets about this industry," he said in a low voice, suddenly thinking of Legend. At the words, Agnes's eyebrows lifted in some mild surprise. "But nothing that could have prepared me for  _this_ , of course."  
  
After a serious look of agreement, Agnes started gathering her things together and speaking with some finality. "I'm afraid your real name is irreversibly made famous now, but you should know Wild Tiger's real identity is still protected. We agreed on a story to go with so we can all be consistent in what we say if it comes up at a press conference some others and I are doing tomorrow. Kotetsu Kaburagi is an employee here and a friend of Barnaby who was at Samantha Stone's house to find out if she'd heard from him since the time he'd gone missing. Maverick altered his memories to make him seem insane as part of his plan to frame him for her murder since there would be difficulty determining a rational motive, but now Mr. Kaburagi has recovered his memories and no longer thinks he's Wild Tiger."  
  
Kotetsu nodded in acknowledgement, relieved to know that at least that whole mess had been tidied up for him. As they both stood up to leave, he said, "Listen, I don't know what I'll be able to do. But I  _will_  think about this."  
  
She let out a long, tired breath as she went to open the door. "We'll get repairs on your suits started just in case."

  
  
  
  
Not long after leaving the elevator on the bottom floor, he spotted Karina standing among everyone in the bustling main entrance area. She was almost unrecognizable with her face covered in bandages, no make-up on, and her hair pulled back in a ponytail looking like she'd barely had a chance to put a brush through it in all the time since he'd last seen her. If Kotetsu hadn't overheard her voice as she finished a call on her cellphone he might have passed by without even noticing it was her.  
  
"Don't worry, I'm finally coming home now," she was saying. "Dad's just been running late so I got breakfast here...Yeah." She caught his eye then as he started crossing the moving crowd between them. "Okay, see you later."  
  
She hung up and then they turned to each other with weak, tired smiles.  
  
"Hey, you alright?" Kotetsu said grimly. "I heard Pepsi dumped you."  
  
"Yeah, it's no big deal," she said, shaking her head, and then gave a dry laugh. "Between you and me, I don't think I'm going to miss my manager all that much. And I'll probably be able to work something out with another company, so..." Her lips went tight and she started avoiding eye contact with him, looking like this was making her think of something awful, and then he saw her eyes start tearing up as her next breaths came loud and shaky.  
  
"Hey! No, don't do  _that_!" he said, reaching out and clutching her shoulder. "What's...?"  
  
"It's Origami," she said with her voice starting to break a little, wiping at one eye. "He lost his sponsor, too, and...unless someone else decides to pick up his contract, it's pretty certain he's going to have to go."  
  
Kotetsu's mouth slowly dropped open a little and his shoulders sank sadly. "Oh no," he said.  
  
"I just can't help but think...it should be  _me._  If somebody has to lose this job..."  
  
"Come on, don't say that," he said as he pulled her into an attemptedly comforting but careful hug, remembering she was cut and stitched up all over.  
  
"This was never even what I most wanted to do," she said through her sniffling. "And he...He didn't even  _do_ anything, it's so unfair!"  
  
"I know," he said, looking back down at her face as they drew back away from each other. "But  _you_  shouldn't feel bad. And hey, maybe something will work out still. We don't know yet if all this panic is needed."  
  
"Yeah..." She wiped her eyes dry one last time with a final sigh, calming down.  
  
"So somebody else already bought you or what?" he asked.  
  
"It's not official yet, but I'll probably be able to go over to Fire Emblem's company and partner up with him. The Fire and Ice Duo or some bullshit like that."  
  
Normally Kotetsu might have been a little alarmed by her using such strong language, but given the situation he just found himself muttering with a frown, "Yeah, 'bullshit' is right."  
  
A heavy look fell over her face, as if something had just been made all the more real to her. "I never thought  _you'd_  have that kind of attitude."  
  
He looked down from her eyes, having nothing to say to that.  
  
"Listen..." Karina wiped at her nose as she hesitated a moment. "Some of us heard from Barnaby why you're leaving. What's really going on." She shook her head, looking at him with such blindingly honest sympathy he could hardly take it directly. "I'm really sorry, Tiger. That has to be hard."  
  
"Hey, don't worry about  _me_ ," he said, shaking his head as a knee-jerk reaction. "I'll be okay."  
  
Her expression turned a little more withdrawn, and then in the way she quickly looked away from him for a second he sensed something that made him feel strangely guilty for shrugging it off like that. After a moment of silence he just said wearily, "It's not like I can do this forever, right?"  
  
She gave him a small, understanding smile. "It just won't be the same anymore. With  _three_  of you gone if both Ivan and Barnaby..."  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"Oh my God. Barnaby!" She looked like she couldn't believe she'd forgotten something. "I should have told you right away—I guess a lot of reporters must have been tipped off by now that Barnaby still hasn't been sighted coming home or even leaving the building since last night, 'cause when I was by the doors just a while ago I could see them everywhere."  
  
"Ugh,  _nuts_ ," he said in agitation. "He was probably hoping to  _avoid_ that by waiting so long to leave. How many are out there?"  
  
"I don't know, I could see maybe a couple dozen. But that was half an hour ago."  
  
He gave her a quick, grateful pat on the shoulder. "Thanks, Karina." Just before turning to go he added, "And for crying out loud,  _go home_  and take it easy for a minute or two."  
  
She rolled her eyes and called after him, "I  _am_ , okay?"  
  
He found Barnaby about halfway from there to the doors, standing against a pillar with his arms crossed. When Barnaby saw him coming his way, there was a strange and instantaneous change in his face that made it look like he now knew where he was again. It was such a subtle thing to see yet so great and undeniable at the same time, and it sharply pricked his chest and made him feel unreasonably sorry that he'd had to leave Barnaby on his own here just for this long. Even being out at parties for very long came to feel like a demanding activity for someone like him, so at a time like this he was probably incredibly eager to be away from the company of so many people and finally have some privacy.  
  
Once Kotetsu reached him, he opened his mouth to say something but then didn't when Kotetsu immediately took him by the arm to lead him away. "Have you looked outside?" he asked.  
  
Starting to walk along with him, Barnaby answered, "No, but I was told our ride should be waiting by now."  
  
"Yeah, and so are the press."  
  
Barnaby looked forward and said flatly, "Oh."  
  
"We could use our powers and make a beeline for it," he suggested.  
  
"You don't have your mask, though."  
  
"Oh, that's right..."  
  
"It's okay," Barnaby said wearily. "Let's just go."  
  
Sure enough, they hadn't made it halfway down the steps outside before they started getting spotted and followed by a gathering crowd. By the time they were getting close to the street, Barnaby had cameras flashing at him and voice recorders getting poked at his face from all angles while various voices from the swarm spoke up with prodding queries.  
  
"Barnaby! Can you give us a comment about your position on supporting Apollon Media after the recent discoveries?"  
  
"Do you intend to quit being a Hero now?"  
  
"I don't know yet what I'll do," he answered, sounding uneasy and, probably uncontrollably, a little bitter. As they were making their way through the crowd as fast as they could, Barnaby had taken on a very guarded appearance with some obvious discomfort leaking through the surface, and even something like confusion. All the painstaking grooming of him for getting far in the world of celebrity had not prepared him for a situation in which it was only appropriate to be human. With the overwhelmed state of mind he was still in, putting on his usual charming and self-possessed face without letting it crack was not even an option, so a part of him seemed to have just shut down while he had no idea how to react to everything coming at him.  
  
"Does this exposure of the CEO's corruption not put into question for you the integrity of the whole company you've worked for?"  
  
"Didn't Maverick influence your choice to become a Hero in the first place? Is it true he was close to your family and like a father to you?"  
  
"Okay, that's all!" Kotetsu's voice whipped out over all the others. He brought a guiding arm around Barnaby's shoulders as if some protective instinct made him feel like that could keep them at a distance, and then once they were moving closer together they were able to push through the crowd quicker.  
  
"Mr. Brooks, do you feel any differently about Lunatic's methods of punishing crime now that it's clear there are some NEXT criminals who can't be—"  
  
"Will you  _get lost_?" he shouted as they finally made it to the black limo waiting for them. The driver was standing by it holding the back door open for them, and Kotetsu nodded toward the car to tell Barnaby to go ahead first.  
  
It was an instant relief when they were both seated inside and the door was shut on all the shouts and flashing cameras, softening the outside noise into just a vaguely resonating muffle. The sunlight was starting to bear down harshly by this hour, coming through from the front seats where the windows weren't tinted to shine almost directly in their faces. After Barnaby asked the driver to go first to his apartment building and they started moving, Kotetsu thought about moving to the seats on the opposite side that faced the back of the car. But before he could bother, Barnaby reached up and pressed a button on the ceiling that raised a screen between them and the front seats, blocking the light out.  
  
They had both hurried into the car without bothering to settle into the most comfortable and practical positions; Barnaby had slid over enough to let Kotetsu in after him but not much more, and he was still sitting quite close to Kotetsu's side near the middle of the seat. With the screen obstructing the view of the front of the car, even the sound from the radio station the driver was listening to was now almost completely blocked out and very faint, and it was welcome but strange suddenly being somewhere so quiet now.  
  
Relaxing with a quiet sigh, Kotetsu let his head fall back against the seat and started leaning into the arm rest on the door, putting some breathing room between him and Barnaby.  
  
Then Barnaby reached a hand to the side and stopped him with a sudden strong grip around his tie. "Kotetsu..."  
  
He never got a chance to answer before Barnaby had pulled him close. He closed in almost as soon as Kotetsu turned his head, too fast for him to see what was coming, so with a sudden press of warmth and softness bringing an instantaneous light-headedness and no understanding of how it had happened, he just found himself being kissed by Barnaby.  
  
Maybe it was because he was so physically and mentally exhausted at the moment, so ready for something that would let his mind just let go of the rest for a moment, but at first he just accepted it with a quick and eager intake of breath. He raised his hands up to Barnaby's shoulder and neck, feeling the need to touch something right in front of him to steady himself. And then with no thought, as their mouths started moving together with more purpose, his hands started slowly roaming, running through Barnaby's hair and finding the small of his back. His eyes had fallen shut somehow, his brain shutting down a little for the first time in this entire fast-paced morning. Then as they both seemed to settle more acutely into the feel of each other, the soft low sigh that came from Barnaby, sounding so desperately relieved, was the thing that brought Kotetsu back into focus.  
  
" _Wait_ ," he muttered almost incoherently against Barnaby's lips before pulling back. He had to wait a second for his breathing to even out more again before he felt like he could speak properly. "Bunny, this...Are you  _okay_?"  
  
As Kotetsu looked at his face and scrutinized every little detail of his appearance right then like that might help him understand, the traces of all he'd been through in the past couple days were still there in some form, a vaguely sad hollowness in his eyes. But as he seemed to be trying to find where to start, Kotetsu could also see a kind of agitation he was very used to seeing in his features, like he thought Kotetsu's worrying about whether he was actually thinking this through right now was irritatingly typical of him.  
  
"Never mind—Stupid question," Kotetsu realized after letting him struggle long enough with trying to answer. "I just...seem to remember you feeling very differently about this?"  
  
"I know. I'm sorry, I..." Anxious frustration growing in his eyes, Barnaby lowered his eyes down with a heavy and slightly shuddering sigh, and only then did it start to show how nervous and uncomfortable he really was, now gripping his knees a bit tightly. Of course he would be, Kotetsu realized. This was probably like nothing he'd ever risked doing before in his life.  
  
Which was fair enough because Kotetsu didn't really know what he was doing either when he reached out to lay his hand on one side of Barnaby's neck again. The rare impulsive abandon in Barnaby's behavior just moments before seemed almost completely gone, but when Kotetsu touched him he raised his eyes back up to him and managed to get out, "Dammit, Kotetsu, I'm not...What do you want, a _sonnet_?"  
  
Kotetsu grinned a little, running his thumb soothingly along his jaw. "Fine, we can talk about it later," he said. When he leaned in close and came within an inch of closing the distance, he could feel Barnaby's still slightly tense breathing, and he murmured, "Relax."  
  
The last inch between their lips closed again, as natural and effortless as an inhale, and he could tell the instant Barnaby let his instincts take over again. After a last tentative moment, he let go so completely he seemed to melt right into his arms with a slight sway forward as they both turned their faces at an angle to deepen the kiss. They kissed slowly and languidly in their exhaustion, all of this such direly needed relief from the weight of all they'd been through that allowed them to finally feel some sense of calm. Barnaby made a content humming noise in his throat as Kotetsu reached inside his jacket to run his hands down both sides of his waist, lightly pulling him closer. He shed off the jacket and tossed it aside as he lifted a leg over Kotetsu and then turned into him, straddling him over his lap, and then immediately lowered his head to press his lips to his neck. Kotetsu lightly pressed his nails into his back and felt his own breaths coming heavier as Barnaby started tasting his way from under an ear down to the pulse at Kotetsu's lower neck, dragging his lips along his skin as he gave light and warm little kisses with wet flicks of his tongue.  
  
After a while of this slowly making him crazy, Kotetsu's breath dragged out in somewhat of a soft growl and he raked one hand back in Barnaby's hair to direct his head back upward and his mouth back to his. Soon it was all open, wet sliding warmth again, their mouths and tongues pressing together with a building pressure as their bodies also unconsciously pressed closer together. Before long Kotetsu's skin was prickling warmly all over with the sudden awareness that Barnaby had started rocking against him just a little in a slow rhythm, and as they were pressed together so tightly Kotetsu could feel, down there between his legs, what it was doing to him...  
  
"H-hey there." His raspy voice came out sounding teasing and somewhat astonished at the same time as he reached down to clutch Barnaby's hips tightly. "I guess you  _do_  really mean it."  
  
Right before he spoke, Barnaby had seemed to realize just then what he was doing and stopped moving against him—perhaps only so successfully with the added restraint of Kotetsu's grasp on him, if the thick and heated look in his eyes was any indication. But then his expression quickly sharpened to one of mild annoyance. "'Hey there'?" he said back in a cringing tone.  
  
Kotetsu rolled his eyes. "I don't know!"  
  
" _Please_ don't say that in this context ever again."  
  
"Whatever, princess." The annoyed look on Barnaby's face got a little more defined, but when Kotetsu grabbed him close and started kissing him again, Barnaby's hands were back all over him right away. Kotetsu started it over slow and easy again, knowing Barnaby hadn't meant to react so strongly and they should probably pull things back a notch. He was overcome with more of a ridiculously light feeling than ever now as he let it sink in how Barnaby had just said "ever again," because he really was serious, he really was counting on them ending up "in this context" many more times, and oh yeah, that was even better than the great luminous revelation that he'd just gotten Barnaby Brooks Jr. hard.  
  
It was as if his body had disconnected from his brain at some point in the last ten minutes and his hands were doing what they were doing completely naturally and without thought, but he still kept feeling like any moment he was going to lose feeling in his arms and just completely freeze up because he had forgotten how to do this after so long. He knew that being touched like this might  _never_  have been a very familiar thing for Barnaby, which really shouldn't have mattered, yet the thought of that possibility right now was doing wonderfully undignified things to his stomach.  
  
When he hitched Barnaby up a bit higher on one raised leg so he could reach his neck easier and then went right to kissing the sensitive skin behind one of his ears, Barnaby said his name in a low sigh. It sounded totally unintentional, articulated so softly it almost seemed Kotetsu could have imagined it, but the way his body automatically shuddered in response said otherwise. He circled his arms tighter around Barnaby and brought him close with his face still buried against his neck just to hug him in a full and secure grasp. He closed his eyes when Barnaby wrapped his arms around his shoulders just as tightly, and for a while they just stayed still holding each other this way, feeling each other breathing.  
  
Then Kotetsu turned his back to the window to lean against the door and put his legs up on the seat, both of them adjusting their positions until Barnaby was lying across him with his head against his chest. A look out the window behind him told Kotetsu they were only about halfway to Barnaby's block now, and he was nothing but grateful for the thick traffic. They stayed in a tired silence for a minute before Barnaby spoke with a soft, worn-sounding voice.  
  
"Kotetsu, when I acted the way I did that time...after you kissed me..."  
  
"Mm-hm?" he said softly. It hardly seemed to matter to know now, but he waited and listened, running a hand down Barnaby's arm.  
  
"It wasn't because I didn't think of you that way then. I knew I kind of did. Whether I was ready to deal with it at all was another story...But even when I told you I didn't want that kind of relationship with anyone, I think I already knew that if I did I would want it with you."   
  
Kotetsu had to smile. "I really had no idea."  
  
"I was pretty confused about it, and mostly just felt ridiculous about it." Barnaby gave a sigh, sounding like it seemed almost embarrassingly stupid to him now. "I'd never been close to anybody the way we were becoming close, and with the kind of thoughts I'd sometimes have about you out of nowhere, I thought maybe I was just getting carried away with myself out of curiosity more than anything. Because I'd always felt weird and uncomfortable about the thought of...well, everything I'd never tried with anyone, but I realized it was quite a different thing to think of it being with someone I know and trust. And thinking about it that way and remembering how inexperienced I was only made me feel even more ridiculous about the idea of actually..." Breathing out a little forcefully, he seemed to gather himself for a second like he was close to losing the nerve to admit all of this. "So you know, then when you kissed me like it was as simple as that, part of me felt like yelling at you about how stupid you were to think you wanted to do that...I guess what I just never considered then is that you might have felt almost just as awkward and uneasy about the idea of going there as I did."  
  
Kotetsu gave a light, low laugh. "Yeah. I knew I was really attracted to you, but obviously neither of us was ready to seriously think about it."  
  
"No...After we'd defeated Jake, I was enjoying moving forward with my life, and there were things about the  _idea_  of being with someone that I knew had maybe begun to appeal to me more. But having that much obligation to somebody besides myself for the first time in my life was what I still felt like I couldn't even consider. I just don't..."  
  
Seeming to struggle to find the right words to explain, Barnaby hesitated as he wrapped an arm around Kotetsu's middle.  
  
"I don't like to rely too much on other people, you know that," he said. "It's hard for me to see the potential reward in investing a lot into any kind of relationship, especially because dealing with things on my own feels easier and I have to sort of force everything else. I'm usually only interested in other people in whatever capacity they can be of some use or benefit to me. I know how that sounds, but it's just how I've always been and the way I know how to accomplish everything."  
  
Kotetsu lowered his head so his lips brushed against the top of his head as he said softly, "I know."  
  
"But I guess the problem is...that's  _all_  I know and understand," Barnaby continued. "I so easily assume that everyone else is the same way and just not as unapologetic and practical about it. I don't understand things like selfless generosity, so it's hard for me to trust it. I always have to assume there's something behind it. And when I realized  _this_  is what you wanted between us, it just felt like...it explained a lot. And more than anything I think I was just frustrated with myself for feeling disappointed, because it meant I'd been foolish enough to start expecting anything different from you than I would from anyone else. I knew deep down I was probably making way too much of it, but it hurt just to think that your motivations might be more complicated than you let on and maybe you really didn't get how much it meant to me just to be friends."  
  
"But complicated is just what people  _are_ ," Kotetsu said, now absently stroking fingers through his hair. "Maybe I never  _expected_  anything from you through everything I was doing to make things work between us, but I honestly can't say for sure that my eagerness to get you to like me had nothing to do with me feeling something...possibly even early on, I mean."   
  
Barnaby smiled just a little. "Well, that's easy to understand now. But I was still figuring you out back then. Even though I was kind of doing the exact same thing after you kissed me, when  _you_ tried to brush it off like it was no big deal at first, that didn't really help my confusion about it. I didn't understand yet then how often you're just putting on a tough front and it has nothing to do with taking things lightly."  
  
"Yeah," he said with a low sigh. "Fair enough."  
  
In the silence while he stopped a moment, the look on Barnaby's face started darkening. Kotetsu had a feeling the real point he wanted to get to was coming. He raised a hand back to Barnaby's head to brush some of his hair out of his eyes and then smoothed his fingertips soothingly around the back of his neck under his hair, which made Barnaby shut his eyes briefly and seemed to give him encouragement to keep talking.  
  
"But always just looking after myself...all that time...it was all pointless," he said bitterly, even with a hint of shame. "All the worries I have about trusting anyone too much, they've never even mattered. The whole time I  _couldn't_  really rely on myself at all. I couldn't even trust my own  _memories._ I know my determination to be so self-reliant just made it easier for him to keep using me like that. If you hadn't been around and didn't question what was going on and complicate things for him, I would have gone on believing it was Jake and never would have gotten free of his control. And to think how close he came to turning me against you so there'd be  _no one_  to..."  
  
As his voice took on a tense and horrified edge, Kotetsu just held his head close against him as he wrapped his other arm around him tighter. "Hey, it's not your fault he took advantage of that," he said. "It doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the way you are because you feel the need to look out for yourself. Especially considering there hasn't  _been_  anyone else looking out for you most of your life. What matters is you  _did_  allow yourself to rely on me so that there was someone around when there really needed to be. What use is it that you've got me now if it doesn't mean you can keep doing things your way and just leave it to me to question it sometimes?"  
  
Something in Barnaby's face now looked hesitant and doubtful. "Is that really what you want?" he asked, his voice going especially quiet.  
  
He had to take that in for a second of slight surprise. "I wouldn't have it any other way," he answered surely. "Hell, is that one of the reasons you've been so scared of this? Did you think being with me would just mean having a whole new set of someone else's expectations to follow?"  
  
"Well, when you say it like that...But it's still hard to imagine you understand what you're signing up for."  
  
"Like it doesn't go both ways. Do you think this is an easy thing for  _me_?" He took one of Barnaby's hands and pressed it against his chest. "Maybe it  _seems_  scary, but I just want...you. The real you who I already know. Anybody can turn on the TV and get the fake you that takes all that effort. Things will be kind of the same as they've always been, I'd think. Except now it won't make me a little sad being with you sometimes because I can kiss you when I want to and always tell you what I'm really thinking and...well...other things," he finished with a kind of timid little smile, even as Barnaby couldn't see him.  
  
"Mm." Barnaby turned his face down for a second, partly hiding the smile on his own face that immediately followed that, and then he just looked vaguely amused. "The same as it's always been...So what you're saying is it's practically never going to be simple."  
  
He laughed. "Well, that kinda goes without saying. For  _anybody._ " He reached down to the floor to pick up Barnaby's jacket and then put it over his shoulders so that it covered him like a blanket. "You going to be okay if I'm kind of busy the next couple days?"  
  
With a small nod, Barnaby said, "I think so...You wouldn't believe how much I've been going without sleep the past few days. Hopefully I'll finally start feeling it soon and can use today to crash for a long time. Anyway...I'm sure you need a lot of time with your daughter while she's here."  
  
"After just one day I'm not gonna trust that I'm remembering this morning right," Kotetsu said. "I already feel like I need to pinch myself and don't even know where I am...Might partly have something to do with the awesome drugs Agnes gave me."  
  
Barnaby raised an eyebrow at that but decided not to ask. "Well, don't worry." He closed his eyes with a warm smile. "When I see you again, I'll remind you."  
  
He grinned at the sound of that. "But promise you'll give me a call if you need to, or want to, for  _anything_. Then I won't worry so much."  
  
Barnaby's look had grown serious when he opened his eyes. "Kotetsu...at this point, I don't see how I can possibly survive any of this without demanding a lot from you, whether I like it or not," he said uneasily. "That's one thing you need to know you're getting yourself into. So if I don't call you soon, you can be sure I'm managing alright."  
  
He wouldn't have thought anything could be so brutal and so incredible to hear all at once, showing how much Barnaby had been beat and broken down into nothing but honesty. He said it like a part of him really meant it as a warning of how little there was to be gained here, but there was also so much more strength in the words than Barnaby probably realized. At least Kotetsu knew  _he_  could probably never admit so blatantly that he depended on someone that much, even in a time of such desperate need and vulnerability as Barnaby was in now.  
  
He squeezed Barnaby's hand, holding it tighter against him, and just murmured, "Okay. Good."  
  
A slightly numbing drowsiness was taking over him now. He didn't know or want to know where they were. It felt kind of like the world was falling down around them and he didn't care. It couldn't hurt them.


End file.
